Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today responded to new information released by the website WikiLeaks about the war in Iraq. According to analysis by The New York Times, “deaths of Iraqi civilians — at the hands mainly of other Iraqis, but also of the American military — appear to be greater than the numbers made public by the United States during the Bush administration.”

“We need a true accounting of the war in Iraq. The American people have a right to know how many innocent civilians were killed in a war based on lies. It is possible that more than a million innocent civilians have perished as a result of the invasion and the ensuing war. As we still grieve for the loss of our own U.S. troops, we must remember that the Iraqi people are still grieving over the loss of husbands, wives, sons and daughters who were innocent noncombatants. We have a moral responsibility to acknowledge the massive loss to the people of Iraq and the world,” said Kucinich.

Kucinich hosted a Congressional briefing on Capitol Hill in 2006 after Lancet published an research article estimating additional civilian casualties to that point were likely to be about 650,000 and could be as high as 1 million. Kucinich led the effort against the war in the House of Representatives, and was one of the few, if not the only, Member of Congress to repeatedly raise the issue of the death of innocent civilians as a result of the war. 

“The suffering of the Iraqi people is unfathomable. We deplore the loss of life. Lives lost in a war based on lies is a stain on our conscience. The deaths of innocent civilians has made the American mission in Iraq a mission impossible because of the predictable undermining of public confidence. We must restore that confidence through true accountability, which is a necessary step towards truth, reconciliation and ultimately peace,” said Kucinich.

Kucinich has consistently been at the forefront of issues related to ending the Iraq war. Before the war began, Kucinich distributed an analysis to colleagues that examined the Bush Administration’s faulty logic, point by point, that led to a war of choice.