900,000 US Bullets For Every Iraqi Bad Guy

How bad is Iraq, really? Paul Craig Roberts blows holes in the Bush administration lies of a limited 20,000-strong insurgency:

The "cakewalk war" is now two and one-half years old. U.S. casualties (dead and wounded) number 20,000. As 20,000 is the number of Iraqi insurgents according to U.S. military commanders, each insurgent is responsible for one U.S. casualty.

U.S. troops in Iraq number about 150,000. Obviously, U.S. troops have not inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi insurgents. U.S. troops have perhaps inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi civilian population, primarily women and children who are the "collateral damage" of the "righteous" and "virtuous" U.S. invasion that is spreading civilian deaths all over Mesopotamia in the name of democracy

What could the U.S. have possibly done to give America a worse name than to invade Iraq and murder its citizens?

According to the Sept. 1 Manufacturing & Technology News, the Government Accounting Office has reported that over the course of the cakewalk war, the U.S. military's use of small caliber ammunition has risen to 1.8 billion rounds. Think about that number. If there are 20,000 insurgents, it means U.S. troops have fired 90,000 rounds at each insurgent.

Very few have been hit. We don't know how many. To avoid the analogy with Vietnam, until last week the U.S. military studiously avoided body counts. If 2,000 insurgents have been killed, each death required 900,000 rounds of ammunition.

The combination of U.S. government-owned ammo plants and those of U.S. commercial producers together cannot make bullets as fast as US troops are firing them. The Bush administration has had to turn to foreign producers such as Israel Military Industries. Think about that. Hollowed-out U.S. industry cannot produce enough ammunition to defeat a 20,000-man insurgency.

Talk about damned statistics.