George Bush by the numbers

The British Paper the Independent (reprinted at Common Dreams) notes some statistics on Bush’s first term: “232, number of American combat deaths between May 2003 and January 2004; 501, number of American servicemen to die in Iraq from the beginning of the war (so far); 0, number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender to the Allies in May of 1945; number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush Administration has allowed to be photographed; 0, number of funerals or memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq; 100, number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003; …” It goes on, and the numbers are striking. These are figures for Iraq, a situation for which there is ever less evidence that a preemptive strike was warranted. They don’t even begin to hint at the numbers we could count up in terms of environmental degradation, damage to civil rights, gutting of the public education system, and so on. President Bush carries a personal faith that is much spoken of, but I am convinced there are much more just ways of putting that faith into practice in daily life.