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But who's counting?

In a rare Q&A session before the World Affairs Council yesterday, President Bush was asked about Iraqi deaths in the US led war. Here is the exchange:
Q. Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

Bush: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.

Now besides the fact that Bush actually took questions from an audience who wasn’t pre-screened for the event, the most notable thing about this exchange is the fact that it is the first time that Bush has acknowledged that more then just US troops have died in Iraq. But that 30,000 estimate (or should I say guess) is just that, a guess. The Bush administration has no idea how many civilians have died. We have spent almost $275 billion thus far on the war and yet not a dime has been spent on determining the human cost of this war (in terms of Iraqi civilian lives anyway, reporting the number of insurgents killed or captured always seems to work for them as a means of gauging “progress”).

By not closely examining the total human cost of this war (American and Iraqi), Bush can continue to keep the public in the dark about just what it has really cost to continue to “bring democracy to Iraq.”

(Originally posted on Yahoo360)