100,000

The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health says that 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US/UK invasion. 100,000. That’s more men, women, and children than Saddam’s regime killed in the 10 years before his removal.

This is not a comedy outfit like Iraq Body Count. They’re serious public health professionals whose professional reputation is on the line. If you assume they’re lying, that says more about your partisan leanings than theirs.

Anyway. Our troops are in Iraq now, and the slaughter will almost certainly get worse if we pull them out. The chances that Islamist terrorists will launch vicious attacks on the west will be far higher if we pull them out. So we’re probably obliged to leave them there for the foreseeable future, and hope against hope that some kind of non-slaughterous regime will emerge.

So what are we left with? A country full of corpses and ruins, where even the world’s most powerful army can’t establish law and order – and the knowledge that not only would the UK and the US be better off, not only would the War on Terror have been more successful, but that even the Iraqis would be better off, if Saddam were still in power.

Given how incredibly evil Saddam was, this conflict appears to have some important lessons for people who believe in the concept of regime change for humanitarian reasons [*]. Indeed, that’s almost certainly the only good it will do.

I’ve just noticed Johann Hari’s response to the study: he points out that a large proportion of the casualties are due to the appalling post-invasion fuckups and the non-cancellation of Ba’athist debt.

This probably bolsters the theoretical case for humanitarian intervention… however, I’m less convinced about the pragmatic case. Well-informed people with integrity supported the Iraq war because we thought it would make life better for the Iraqis, while perfectly aware that the Bush administration was in it for a wide range of other, unaltruistic and mostly fictional reasons.

We should have considered the point that – since the invasion wasn’t being carried out by people who gave a fuck about what happened to the Iraqis – that they wouldn’t do anything to stop them from dying. And this will be the case in pretty much every other comparable war: the people who start wars rarely do so because they’re lovable humanitarians. They generally do so because they’re low-down dirty bastards.

[*] I used to, up until about January this year.

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Morrissey, immigration, and the SS

The crowds are incensed because Morrissey has compared US immigration officers to the SS.

The crowds are foolish. A large proportion of good immigration officers [*], whether in the US, the UK, India, or anywhere else, would make good SS men – and nearly all SS men would make good immigration officers. The two jobs share some very important traits: the willingness to follow immoral and nonsensical orders without question, and the ability to take pleasure in inflicting suffering upon others.

Many immigration officers would creditably refuse if asked to shoot the unfortunate would-be migrants themselves, instead of merely sending them abroad to be shot by whichever vicious regime they’re escaping from. I’d be surprised, however, if this ‘many’ were much more than 75%.

It’s easy to write Nazi Germany off as a place full of uniquely evil people, and the developing world off as Not Europe. It’s also foolish. The world is depressingly full of horrible, horrible bastards who take great pleasure in fucking people over. The difference between civilised and Nazi society is that the Nazis celebrated immigration officers and other vicious, petty-minded thugs as heros.

While civilised people’s opinions may differ on such groups’ necessity, it’s vitally important that we remain agreed that they’re scumbags.

[*] I’m aware that many immigration officers take no pride in their job and try and avoid causing trouble and general badness. I have no quarrel with these people.

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Alliburto, alliburto

Remember the Iraq oil-for-food scandal? The one that meant, in the eyes of the pro-swivel-eyed-lunacy brigade, that France was deliberately trying to avoid enforcing inspections in Iraq because French companies were cleaning up on the (presumably pork-inflated) work?

Two of the largest French companies involved – accounting for 20% of total payouts to French-registered firms under the scheme were, err, General Electric and Halliburton. But the cash went via their French subsidiaries, so it was clearly the cheese-eating surrender monkeys who were to blame.

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Google Have I Got News For You

From the Google News front page: "Doctors to consider sending ailing Palestinian president to…" (it links to this boring article, which has a full headline).

The best suggestion for filling in the blank wins some kind of award. And this isn’t LGF, so responses along the lines of ‘hell’ are acceptable only if funny.

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Tending toward the petty

Perhaps lest Guardian readers attempt to eSsassinate him, the White House has blocked all traffic from outside the US from visiting georgewbush.com.

I guess the real logic is that the postal votes from Americans overseas are in by now, so there’s no reason to waste bandwidth on people who doesn’t get a vote next week. Still seems a bit against the spirit of the Internet, though. I’m sure Al Gore would never have done such a thing…

Update: if you’re a filthy furrner and you’re desperate to check out the Prez, then this link gets you in just fine.

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That article again

Just a quick one: if you missed the notorious Charlie Brooker piece, it’s here, hopefully indefinitely.

And if you want to join Fridgemagnet and me in writing to the Guardian to protest their craven cowardice in pulling the piece, but are too lazy to work out how to phrase the letter, then he has some suggestions.

It’s also worth pointing out that as with all Charlie Brooker/Chris Morris work (although the great man himself probably wasn’t involved here), the more fuss that people make about the piece, the funnier the whole affair becomes. Which scientifically proves that the article is, indeed, funny.

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Sad news

Very sad news indeed, in fact: the great John Peel has died in Peru. May he rest in peace, and *general emotional things* to everyone who knew him. Now there was a proper fucking hero.

Even more tragically, Vernon Kay is still alive.

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Mark Steyn gets it in one

Unsurprisingly, Mark Steyn has joined the Charlie Brooker pile-on. His column is as tedious and xenophobic as always, but he does hit on rather a good point: "Brooker and the Guardian seem to be protesting no, don’t worry, we were just talking the talk, there’s nothing we’re prepared to walk the walk for."

Yes. That’s why we’re better than you, you bloodthirsty moron. We don’t want to run around killing people. We’d rather sit around making ironic jokes about how much of an idiot George Bush is. Because, oddly enough, we think that sitting around making jokes about George Bush is *fun*, while running around killing people is *bad*.

Oh, and as if this case weren’t proof enough that the Bushites have lost all sense of perspective, Powerline is now busy claiming that an attempt by some rowdy youths to pelt Ann Coulter with pies was tantamount to an assassination attack, rather than an attempt to pelt an irritating nutcase with pies.

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