As of today’s five-year anniversary of the US attack on Iraq, 1,189, 173 Iraqis have died as a consequence of the invasion, according to the Iraq Body Count. The shocking number, at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, is derived largely from a major study by the prestigious British medical journal, Lancet. (Click here for a complete explanation of methodology.)

The recent Winter Soldier hearings offered harrowing testimony from soldiers returned from the field all attesting to the utter brutality of the US occupation.

The war has also been a complete economic disaster as Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier document in the new issue of The Nation: “With just the amount of the Iraq budget of 2007, $138 billion, the government could instead have provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million Americans who are uninsured. What’s more, we could have added 30,000 elementary and secondary schoolteachers and built 400 schools in which they could teach. And we could have provided basic home weatherization for about 1.6 million existing homes, reducing energy consumption in these homes by 30 percent.”

And as this new video from Americans United for Change makes clear.

What You Can Do Right Now

Write your elected reps and help keep the pressure on Congress.

Write your local media and ask them not to ignore the staggering number of Iraqi deaths.

Tell your friends about this estimate of Iraqi deaths. Spread the word now.