Iraqi Inhofe Is New Baghdad Bob

Jim Inhofe R-OK has left the Red Earth reservation of reality. Back in August, he enthralled us with his keen insights:

“What’s happened there is nothing short of a miracle,” the Senator reported to the Tusla World about Iraq.

And now it appears that civilian deaths are somewhere north of 650,000.

War has wiped out about 655,000 Iraqis or more than 500 people a day since the U.S.-led invasion, a new study reports.

Violence including gunfire and bombs caused the majority of deaths but thousands of people died from worsening health and environmental conditions directly related to the conflict that began in 2003, U.S. and Iraqi public health researchers said.

"Since March 2003, an additional 2.5 percent of Iraq's population have died above what would have occurred without conflict," according to the survey of Iraqi households, titled "The Human Cost of the War in Iraq."

Now, lots of rightards are screaming about these figures, dismissing them as flawed and questionable. They may have a point in that we still have unidentified bodies in New Orleans and an incomplete body count, but the concern for victims of both tragedies from this adminisration are relatively the same. Baghdad Inhofe thinks the war is going smashingly well. I wonder if he talked to this guy?

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — Sabah al-Atia sometimes calls home every 10 minutes when he is working to let his wife know he is still alive. After all, his job is one of the most dangerous in the city.

Mr. Atia is a trash collector.

In a city where a bomb could be lurking beneath any heap of refuse, and where insurgents are willing to kill to prevent them from being discovered, an occupation that pays only a few dollars a day has become one of the deadliest. Most of the 500 municipal workers who have been killed here since 2005 have been trash collectors, said Naeem al-Kaabi, the city’s deputy mayor.

“When we are working, we are working nervously,” said Mr. Atia, 29, who started collecting trash during Saddam Hussein’s rule. “We are carrying our souls in our hands.”

The danger to trash collectors is at the root of one of the most visible symptoms of collapse in Baghdad. Garbage is ubiquitous, especially in dangerous neighborhoods, blanketing street medians, alleys and vacant lots in stinking, fly-infested quilts. Trash collection has joined a long list of basic services, including electricity, water and sewerage, that have slipped badly in many places since the American-led invasion.

Trash collectors have frequently refused to venture into especially problem-plagued Baghdad neighborhoods, including Dora, Adhamiya, Jamiya and Ghazaliya, where spasms of violence have often been the norm. Or they have dashed in and out when the danger ebbed, hauling away what they could.

Insurgents have taken to hiding roadside bombs amid the refuse. Trash collectors sometimes stumble upon them and notify the police, but other times they are not so lucky.

To protect the bombs set for American and Iraqi convoys, insurgents have killed scores of trash collectors.

If it weren't for all the trash and bombs and dead bodies everywhere, it sounds like a swell place.

Inhofe, you are a sockpuppet for big oil and war profiteers, both who are dealers for doom.