Michelle Malkin calls our attention to this astonishing confabulation from the pen of Texas fantasist Molly Ivins:
Since my name is Molly Ivins and I speak for myself, I'll tell you exactly why I opposed invading Iraq: because I thought it would be bad for this country, our country, my country. I opposed the invasion out of patriotism, and that is the reason I continue to oppose it today.
I think it has done nothing but harm to the United States of America. I think we have created more terrorists than we faced to start with and that our good name has been sullied. I think we have alienated our allies and have killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did.
Really? We're responsible for more than a million dead Iraqis? An e-mailer to Michelle Malkin totes up the numbers:
Take estimates of 500,000-1 million soldiers and civilians killed in the Iran-Iraq war triggered by Saddam Hussein, add the 400,000 dead Iraqi civilians USAID estimates to be in at least 53 mass graves found in Iraq so far, and then add the very conservative estimate of 22,000 dead as a result of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait=1,422,000.
Even using iraqbodycount.net's high-end estimate of 25,000 dead (total, by both sides) the numbers aren't even close, unless you use MollyMath, where a couple of ten thousand and some change is worth more than a million.
In a world where an insistence upon objective truth is seen as a droll vestige of an obsolete oppressive white male mindset, it may seem churlish of us to call attention to Ms Ivins' tenuous acquaintance with factual reality. Nevertheless, we can't help but be amazed that a nationally syndicated columnist, even taking into consideration that she's a liberal, would write such a howler. She'd have looked less foolish, perhaps, had she not made such a point of telling us that she was speaking for herself.
