Lies and more lies.

• Author: Galeano, Eduardo
• Position: The Upside-Down World - Column

A Lie

Until a short while ago, the major media were regaling us daily with cheery statistics about the international war against poverty.

Poverty, it was reported, was beating a retreat, though the poor and ill-informed didn't hear about the good news. Now, however, the best-paid bureaucrats of the planet are confessing they were the ones who had it wrong.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The World Bank has made known that its International Comparison Program (which seeks to measure the relative social and economic well-being of the world's countries) has been brought up to date.

In the new findings, the experts correct a few of the errors present in earlier reports. Among other things, they inform us that the poorest of the world's poor number 500 million more than had been previously calculated.

We also learn that the poor countries are quite a bit poorer than the earlier statistics indicated and that their condition deteriorated while the World Bank was selling them the free market happy pills.

Another Lie

At the same time, an ex-vice president of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, in a book written with Linda Bilmes, has investigated the costs of the Iraq War.

President George Bush had announced that the war might cost at most about $50 billion, which at first glance didn't seem too high a price for the conquest of such an oil-rich country.

In round numbers--perhaps squared is the more accurate term--the slaughter of Iraq has lasted more than five years, and in this period the U.S. has spent almost a trillion dollars killing innocent civilians. From above the clouds, the bombs kill without knowing whom, as beneath the shroud of smoke, the dead die without knowing what for. The figure cited by Bush paid for only about a trimester of crimes and speeches. The figure lied, in the service of this war that was born of a lie and has been generating more lies ever since.

And Another Lie

After the entire world knew that in Iraq there were no weapons of mass destruction other than those used by its invaders, the war continued, though the pretexts for it had been forgotten. Then on December 14, 2005, journalists asked how many Iraqi civilians had been killed in the first two years of the war.

President Bush spoke of the issue for the first time. He answered: About 30,000, more or less. And then he made a joke, confirming his ever tasteful sense of humor and timing, and the journalists had a good laugh.

The following year he repeated the figure. He didn't...