A new study has estimated the Iraqi death toll at 655,000 since the start of the invasion. This study was conducted using a new method:

Researchers used household interviews rather than body counts to estimate how many more Iraqis had died because of the war than used to die annually in peacetime.

“We estimate that as a consequence of the coalition invasion of March 18, 2003, about 655,000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation,” said Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States.

That is an astonishing 5% of civilians killed in Iraq. Last month alone, over 2,660 Iraqis died.

Even more disturbing is a new study that reveals 1 in 4 (or 25%) of our troops returning from the war on terror and Iraq are claiming disability. This is a problem that will face our nation for more than a generation and a cost of the Iraq war that has not been predicted into budgets. This month alone we have already lost 39 soldiers in Iraq (almost 4 a day), and if the current trend continues this will be the second most deadly month since the invasion started (April 2004 was the only month more deadly).

With all this bad news, we definitely need some good news. Unfortunately there is none to be found. An AP breaking news alert just came across with this:

WASHINGTON (AP) The Army is preparing plans to keep the current level of troops in Iraq through 2010, the top Army officer said.

So Bush’s deadly catastrophe called Iraq, which was sold to the American public as a war which would last only a few short weeks, is looking more like it might reach the decade point. This is the Republican “stay the course” tactic they have. This is the dangerous rhetoric that is  costing us 4 soldiers a day, over a billion dollars a week and costing the Iraqi’s deaths coming close to a 100 a day. Considering the flat out lies told by the Bush administration to get us into this war, it is time to charge him and his entire administration with the deaths of every single life lost in this failed war. We want accountability on this and those lives demand it.