Dead Iraqis per Senator: this metric should be worn on lapel pins

If the US Senate hadn't voted to let George W Bush start a war against Iraq, masses of Iraqis would not have been killed in our name. But the Senate did permit this, and a lot of Iraqis were slaughtered. And a lot more Iraqis miss their babies, their parents, their loved ones, their homes.

But a lot of these useless Senators were proud of their votes, and I believe it'd be a decent idea to have them wear that twisted pride on the Senate floor. Each of the 77 Senators who voted for this world-wrecking clusterfuck is responsible for some certain number of dead Iraqi citizens. There's no doubt that some Senators bear more responsibility than others, but I don't know who to weight this, so they'll all get an equal share.

There's a lot of disagreement about how many Iraqis were killed after we decided to, well, to go kill them. Estimates range from a non-credible low of 151,000 to a high of 1,000,000. A more recent survey estimated 500,000. Whatever the right number is, almost all of them were civilians. And approximately 30% of these direct-war deaths were children (that is to say, not the children who died later of starvation or disease, or were violently killed--but not directly by US forces). So maybe we can work on adding maiming-count lapel pin or an "I created a million refugees" pina , but I want to start with the war deaths first.

All we have left to do before we commission the manufacture of the lapel pins is to come up with our best guess for the number of war dead.

For 151,000 dead, the pin will read, "I got 1961 Iraqis killed--and 588 of them were kids!"

For 500,000 dead, the pin will read, "I got 6494 Iraqis killed--and 1948 of them were kids!"

For 1,000,000 dead, the pin will read, "I got 12,987 Iraqis killed--and 3896 of them were kids!"

And yes, I see it too--we'll have a hard time fitting all of this onto lapel pins. Maybe we can just list the two numbers, one over the other. A second issue--It could be that not all of the Senators who were proud to vote for the war would be as proud to wear their lapel pins. And a final problem is that some of those Senators have moved on from the Senate to do other things--and they'd have to wear their pins voluntarily since my hypothetical presupposes a Senate rule, which won't cover ex-senators.

But as to the 23 who voted against the war, I'd like to offer them my support. As Hillary Clinton said in 2007, "If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from". Bernie Sanders, while not in the Senate at the time, voted against the war in the House. This is the person I have chosen to receive my vote for President.