"Not I," said the U.S military, who are busy with the surge-o-mania, and with General Betray-us as their leader, who would expect the truth? Civilian casualties are to the military as errors are to fielders in baseball—it doesn’t look good on the record.

“Not I,” said the U.S. government, for to do so would be as good as admitting their policies had created the Iraquagmire and oh, possibly wasted the $450 Billion that could have, say, paid for the health care of every child who is a U.S. citizen, with enough left over to start talking about insurance for everyone who needs it.

"Not I," said the Iraqi people, who are so besieged and distraught by their own losses—and who can blame them? Not easy to arrange for body counts when you are not sure when the electricity is coming back on or whether you are going to get cholera from drinking the tap water.

"Not I," said any of the "36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq" as referred to in the Bush speech Thursday night (who are these people? Liechtensteiners?) who support the illegal war. Courant.com reports that instead, “there are 25 countries supplying 11,685 troops - about 7 percent of the size of the U.S. forces.”

Plenty of us want to know the real truth about civilian casualties. Those grim statistics help us support our arguments about the outrageous human and other costs of this illegal war. Not that we don’t have any amazing arsenal of smoking guns already, but none seem enough to tip Congress toward getting up off their warm seats and taking more decisive action.

“Then I will,” said the Brits, who stepped up to do a proper count—no small thing. This research involved knocking on thousands of doors in dangerous circumstances to speak to 1,461 adults. Answers are tabulated and then extrapolated to the more 4,000,000 Iraqi households.

And how many innocent Iraqis met their deaths as a direct result of the illegal invasion and war upon their soil? More than 1,200,000 according to the British polling agency, ORB.

Last year Lancet, the esteemed medical journal, reported over 600,000 civilian casualties and there was heated debate about the accuracy of those numbers then.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From, “Little Red Hen”

"Then I will," said Little Red Hen.

So she made and baked the bread.

Then she said, "Now we shall see who will eat this bread."

"We will," said cat, goose, and rat.

"I am quite sure you would," said Little Red Hen, "if you could get it."

Then she called her chicks, and they ate up all the bread.

There was none left at all for the cat, or the goose, or the rat.