Jim Hightower

Bodies. Dead ones. Dead bodies are the harsh, horrifying, riveting realties of war.

That's why those who make war don't want you seeing the bodies, don't want you counting them, or thinking about them. If you see, count, or think, you'll quickly question the war itself.

Thus, from the start of George W's disastrous Iraq war, the White House and Pentagon decreed that there could be no cameras witnessing the return of America's dead from Iraq. The bodies arrive in the dark of night at a cordoned off air force base. The media establishment has cravenly submitted to this censorship of truth. Also, even though nearly 2,800 Americans have died in Iraq, Bush has not honored a single one of them by attending their funeral, for to do so would call attention to the bodies... and the real cost of his war.

Of course, Iraqi civilians comprise most of the dead, including a startling number of innocent children and old folks. Morgues and other sources report that the number of dead civilians has now topped 40,000, with the rate of deaths increasing in recent months. This is an unpleasant and politically volatile count – so Iraq's central government has now decreed that only it can release civilian death counts to the media.

But it seems that even 40,000 is a gross undercount. An independent statistical analysis, conducted by a team of American and Iraqi researchers connected to Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, now estimates that more than 600,000 Iraqi civilians have died violently since Bush's 2003 invasion and occupation. The sight of dead bodies – in the streets, in rivers, next door, on TV – has come to be an everyday occurrence for Iraqis. This is a major reason that 82 percent of the people there want U.S. troops to leave.

This is Jim Hightower saying... Don't avert your eyes from the bodies. Silently, the thousands and ever more thousands of dead bodies are telling us the truth about Bush's war.