History will look back on this administration with venom and shame:

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

Of course, these numbers are of course just plain wrong. Everyone knows that an army of liberal university professors and reknowned statisticians at Johns Hopkins are really just kinda wingin' it. If Professor Chimpy says "only" 30,000 have died then by gum that's good enough for me. I also believe that Saddam was responsible for 9-11, that we've found WMDs in Iraq, that the 2000 & 2004 elections were squeaky clean, and that former president Clinton is really this guy in disguise.

And besides, Bush says that the good salt of the earth folks in Iraq really don't mind a little violence with their Corn Flakes in the morning .