Moron In Vermont Petitions to Arrest Bush and Cheney, Claims Bogus 600,000 Lancet Figure

This is Kurt Daims. (Nice hat.) He’s bat-shit crazy.

Daims, resident of Brattleboro Vermont started a petition, gathering signatures from citizens in Brattleboro to arrest President Bush and Vice President Cheney for “war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice” if either ever came to the city. (Vermont is the only state President Bush has never visited).

Here’s a bit from the article I found:

Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter.

“It is an advisory thing,” said Daims, a retired prototype machinist and stay-at-home dad of three daughters.

So far, Vermont is the only state Bush hasn’t visited since he became president in 2001.

Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq.

He said the latest count showed a total of 600,000 people have died in the war.

Daims also said he believed Bush and Cheney were also guilty of espionage for spying on American people and obstruction of justice, for the politically generated firings of U.S. attorneys.

Let’s ride this idiot into town.

First- let’s dispense with the bogus 600, 000 people killed in Iraq figure. This is nonsense.

Let’s go thru some facts associated with the lancet numbers:

The survey is tainted from the word “go”, as it was funded by uber-liberal foaming-at-the-mouth Bush hater, George Soros. (1)(2) He funded nearly half of the $100, 000 to do the survey/study. Does the fact that your study is funded by someone who is VERY wildly anti-war taint it? Come on. Of course it does. Anti-war groups used the number 600, 000 to claim Bush had blood on his hands. They hailed it as proof they were somehow right on the issue. They were completely wrong.

The Iraq Body Count project only lists less than 90, 000 deaths due to violence, tho they claim they undercount. The Iraq Body County project throws any credibility it has out the window from the front page of their very site. Wikipedia’s article on the project puts it well:

The project quotes the top US general in Iraq, Tommy Franks, as saying “We don’t do body counts [1]“. The quotation was from a discussion of the Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan and was referring to counts of enemy soldiers killed, in the context of using enemy body counts as a measure of military success. The website, which omits the context of the quote, could be said to conflate the meaning of “enemy body count” with “civilian deaths caused” and to imply that the US is not interested in the number of civilian deaths its military operations cause. (emphasis added)

If you’re going to be blatantly dishonest on your website’s front page- you lose all credibility. I’ve no idea who runs the project or what their motives are, but it seems to be anti-war, so you have to wonder about how reliable their numbers are. Let’s be fair, and say being anti-war doesn’t necessarily mean they’re trying to pull one over on us…well, the deceptive quote on their site shows the project’s overall character, no?

So, we toss aside Iraqi Body Count for the most part. But, even if we leave them in- they show far less than 600, 000 (they currently show under 100, 000). This guy in VT using the lancet survey claims numbers that are 3 times higher!

The Iraqi Health Ministry did their own survey and list less than 300, 000 deaths.

The United Nations Development Programme Iraq Living Conditions Survey showed far fewer deaths than the lancet as well. They covered far many more households in their survey (over 20, 000 compared to the lancets study of less than 1, 000). You can google for more information, but the numbers were far lower…to be fair, their concentration was on living conditions and not on civilian deaths.

Let’s end the lancet stuff with a few items- Times Online UK claims fraud in the lancet study…National Journal collected the numbers from various sources and always find the lancet study to be completely flawed (or worse).

So, we can safely say- there is no way on earth that anywhere near 600, 000 people have died in Iraq due to the violence related to the war or during the war.

Little need to do this, but let’s quickly dispatch the other nonsense from the petition. Bush and Cheney lied to congress to get us to go war? How is that possible. Members of congress are privy to the same intel the president had on the situation. No stockpiles of WMD were found, but every intelligence agency that matters said the same thing- CIA, MI6, Russian intel, France, Germany, etc- they all said the same thing. Saddam had stockpiles of WMD. There was NO argument over whether or not he had WMD. The argument was over HOW that specific problem should be dealt with. To oust Hussein for this fact or not. The bad intel makes no difference in the end, as there were numerous reasons given by the administration to remove the brutal dictator, including 11 years of flippant refusal to abide by 16 UN resolutions dealing with the regime’s behavior.

The political firings of attorneys. Well, as has been discussed- these attorneys serve at the whim of the president, and the appointments themselves are political. So, no one is going to argue against that, but no one is going to argue it’s illegal or even uncommon- it’s the rule not the exception.

In the end, Daims is an utter loon, and sadly the city of Brattleboro becomes a laughing stock in the process. He’s helping waste tax payer money and time. He’s making himself, his family, and the city look foolish.