Dick Cheney: What I got right about Iraq

COMMENTARY

What I Got Right About The Iraq War

By Dick Cheney (actually, by The Onion)

PublishedTuesday 3:24PM

On the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s important for us as a nation to reflect on that conflict and its consequences. As the vice president of the United States in 2003, I was one of the architects of the project to go after Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Today, I believe it’s important to offer an honest assessment of my role in the Iraq War. Looking back on it now, I have to say that, wow, I mostly got it right.

Seriously, the Iraq War went basically as well as I could have hoped.

We in the Bush administration justified the war on the basis of destroying Saddam’s WMDs and bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. Twenty years later, we know that Saddam didn’t have any WMDs, and that the United States left Iraq in the throes of poverty and violence. Critics then and now have suggested that we deliberately misrepresented intelligence, and that spreading democracy was merely a fig leaf for our true goal of maintaining U.S. political and economic dominance over the world.

To that, I say, no shit. Duh. Of course we were lying. Of course we only went in to maintain American hegemony. That was the whole plan all along. 

Christ, what country do you think we are?

In hindsight, it’s stunning to see how right I was about the long-term impacts of invading Iraq. Sure, there are the obvious wins of destabilizing governments we don’t like, strengthening U.S. control over the oil industry, and killing a bunch of Muslims. That was all pretty neat, and exactly what we expected. But let’s be honest about the Iraqi victims: You don’t care about them, and I don’t care about them. Because, ultimately, the goal of the Iraq War was much bigger than that, and we achieved that goal: the victory of the U.S. war machine over the American people.

In my heart of hearts, I figured that if Americans would accept the Iraq War, then there was nothing they wouldn’t accept. It seems clear, 20 years later, that I’ve been proven right.

For starters, we wanted to put the American political and media class on a permanent war footing. After the Soviet Union collapsed, things looked dicey in terms of keeping Americans all frothed up about foreign adversaries. Sure, 9/11 helped, but what we really craved was a rationale for endless war. In Iraq, we implemented our playbook for the post-Vietnam, post-Soviet, 21st-century invasion, and it’s amazing to see how well it all played out. Today, all we have to do is say “democracy,” and our political and media elite will rush to support any military action like slobbering dogs. I don’t mean to be immodest, but that’s exactly how I predicted it would go down.

Any Iraq War reflection must contend with the rise of ISIS—one of America’s greatest accomplishments. ISIS was a real home run for us. We suspected that sowing wanton violence across the Middle East would stoke anti-American insurgencies that didn’t conform to conventional national or geographic boundaries. In theory, they could be everywhere. And if the enemy could be everywhere, it justified basically any action to stop them. Which was great, because the deliberately vague war on terror gave a blank check to the men and women who bravely reap the profits of our private military contractors.

I imagine the name Halliburton rings a bell? What we wanted to do, what Rumsfeld and Condi and I and the rest of that bunch really wanted to do, was forever shift war-making into the hands of weapons contractors and mercenary armies. Not only does that make me and a bunch of my buddies incredibly rich, but it makes it so that even if regular people wanted to stop the war machine, they couldn’t. All decisions are made outside public control, and there aren’t any democratic mechanisms left to stop it. Of all the legacies of the war, that might be my absolute favorite.

I’m calling on all Americans to support our mission to invade Thailand and restore democracy.

Gotcha! You started feeling all patriotic for a second there, didn’t you? Started getting all indignant about those poor suffering Thai people and ready to put their flag in your social media handle? I have no fucking clue if Thailand has a democracy, and I don’t care. But inspiring that knee-jerk jingoistic reaction in you, that right there is the legacy of the Iraq War. That’s my legacy.

When I’m right, I’m right.

Because ultimately, that might be the thing we were most right about: We figured that tying being a “real American” to patriotism would make it effectively impossible to mount a serious anti-war effort in this country ever again. Since the Iraq War, Democrats have been so worried about being labeled soft on terrorism that they’ve given full-throated support to every military action that our weapons lobbyists and intelligence agencies could devise. In addition, legitimate public grievances over America’s most heinous actions can be reduced by the media to feckless “culture war” battles, which neutralizes their power. If you don’t believe those were major driving forces behind the war in Iraq, I have a weapon of mass destruction to sell you.

It’s easy for armchair critics to condemn the Iraq War. But you have to remember what things were like back in 2003. People actually trusted the government and had faith in the idea of America. Trust and faith aren’t very sturdy things to build a perpetual war machine on, and they don’t make a lot of money, either. The Iraq War eroded faith in the government and drove more Americans into suspicion and hatred, just as we hoped it would. Combine that with rising inequality and the American cult of the individual, and you have a perfect recipe for ensuring that most Americans are too disillusioned to mount collective resistance to any governmental transgressions. That’s what I always hoped the Iraq War might accomplish, and man, it feels good to be right. 

Looking back, it’s safe to say the Iraq War was the high point of my career. Except maybe shooting that guy.

We should be grateful

1. It is truly amazing that there is an observable universe at all with the laws of gravity, physics and chemistry as they are. We should be grateful for this — without it, we would not exist.
2. However the universe began, it is truly amazing that untold generations of novae, supernovae, and planetary nebulae have successively enriched the interstellar medium enough for our own extraordinary solar system came into existence with lots of higher-atomic-number elements. We should be grateful for this — without it, we would not exist.
3. It is also truly amazing that this little planet of ours survived aeons of bombardments by other planetary bodies, enriched by a stabilizing Moon and a good bit of water and enough carbon to enable carbon-based life forms to arise and evolve. We should be grateful for this — without it, we would not exist. Note: no other planet has been discovered that appears to be habitable.
4. It is truly amazing that our species has evolved in such a way that we cooperate better than any other species (except the social insects) and we teach each other skills; so much so that in the past few centuries we have figured out large parts of the puzzles of matter, life, and the universe. Unfortunately, we are also really, really good at organizing ourselves into corporations, ruling classes, tribes, nations and armies that fight each other, oppress and exploit the majority, and do an amazing job of destroying the very fabric of life.
5. I am very, very grateful for all of these wonderful forces that brought us into being. Who or what (being or forces) brought us all into existence is a mystery we will never, ever figure out. If you want to call it “God”, go right ahead, but don’t pretend this god has anything to do with any of the fairy tales recorded in any “holy book”.
6. The only part of this planet that is habitable is extremely tiny. If you try to climb a mountain 4 miles (6 km) above sea level, you will die — unless you bring special, expensive equipment like bottled oxygen. Our very deepest mines (in South Africa), dug at enormous expense to mine gold, are so hot at those levels that you will die down there without special equipment. Also, you can’t dive more than a a few meters into the sea without special training and equipment. Ccompare that few miles of possible vertical travel to the diameter of the Earth (~8000 miles) and you will find that human life without amazing protective bubbles is as thick as a sheet of paper glued to a basketball. And we are screwing it up quickly.
7. If there are other planets out there that are as lucky as Earth, they are SSOOOO far away that there is no conceivable way to get there except in science fiction (ie fairy tales).
8. Let us stop oppressing and murdering each other, and stop destroying the only known habitable planet in the entire universe.

Captain Kirk: The Earth is our only home. Everything out there in space is hellish. We need to start taking care of our home before it, too, becomes a hell.

At age 90, the actor William Shatner got to ride briefly into outer space. He was expecting an epiphany of connection to the Universe out there.

He was not prepared to feel a deep sense of grief.

(I have been making the same argument on this as Shatner for many years now.)

Here is what he wrote:

The age of extinction

My trip to space made me realise we have only one Earth – it must live long and prosper

William Shatner

Star Trek prepared me to feel a connection with the universe. Instead, I felt terrible grief for our planet. At Cop15, our leaders must negotiate to protect it

Wed 7 Dec 2022 10.00 ESTFollow William Shatner

Click to see figure captionThe age of extinction is supported byAbout this contentLast year, at the age of 90, I had a life-changing experience.

I went to space, after decades of playing a science-fiction character who was exploring the universe and building connections with many diverse life forms and cultures.

I thought I would experience a similar feeling: a feeling of deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration. A call to indeed boldly go where no one had gone before.

I was absolutely wrong.

As I explained in my latest book, what I felt was totally different. I knew that many before me had experienced a greater sense of care while contemplating our planet from above, because they were struck by the apparent fragility of this suspended blue marble.

I felt that too.

But the strongest feeling, dominating everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I had ever experienced.

While I was looking away from Earth, and turned towards the rest of the universe, I didn’t feel connection; I didn’t feel attraction. What I understood, in the clearest possible way, was that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death.

I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.

I worry about the world my grandchildren will be living in when they are my ageThis was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realised that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside.

I played my part in popularising the idea that space was the final frontier.

But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is, and will remain, our only home. And that we have been ravaging it, relentlessly, making it uninhabitable.

I was born in Montreal in 1931. During my lifetime, this world has changed faster than for any generation before us. We are now at an ecological tipping point. Without the bold leadership that the times require, we are facing further climate breakdown and ecosystems collapsing before our eyes, with as many as one million species at risk of extinction, according to the latest scientific assessments.‘We are at war with nature’: UN environment chief warns of biodiversity apocalypseRead more

And of all places, it is in the city where I was born that a crucial meeting of the United Nations is being held. At Cop15, the UN biodiversity summit in Montreal, taking place from 7 to 19 December, world governments will negotiate a global deal to stop the loss of biodiversity by the end of the decade. We need world leaders to give their diplomats a powerful mandate for these talks: agree on strong targets to change the way we produce food, to drastically cut pollution, and to conserve 50% of our planet’s land and ocean, with the active leadership of Indigenous peoples and local communities, who have historically been pioneers on all these necessary actions.

I was the oldest man to go to space.

I worry about the world my grandchildren will be living in when they are my age. My generation is leaving them a planet that might pretty soon be barely livable for many of Earth’s inhabitants. My experience in space filled me with sadness, but also with a strong resolve. I don’t want my grandchildren to simply survive. I want them, as an old friend used to say, to be able to live long and prosper.I will do everything I can so that we can protect our one and only home. Our world leaders have an immense responsibility to do the same in Montreal.

William Shatner is a Canadian actor who played Captain James T Kirk in Star Trek for almost 30 years.


He is also author of Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and WonderThe age of extinctionCop15OpinionEnvironmentConservationBiodiversityStar TrekWilliam ShatnerArticleCommentWilliam Shatner

The age of extinction

A Serious Question About COVID

Very serious question here.

Given that:

(a) We are all probably going to get Covid anyway (see this link)

(b) The vaccines are so effective that they make a case of Covid (especially omicron) much like just having a cold;

(c) Those who are old enough to get this free vaccine, but have decided not to, are very obstinate in not facing facts, and are unlikely to be persuaded otherwise;

(d) Very young kids (none of whom can be vaccinated yet) who get Covid (particularly Omicron) have exceedingly low rates of hospitalizations and deaths (see this link)

THEN,

Why don’t we who ARE vaccinated just remove all of our masks **NOW** and go about our business as usual?

In fact, why don’t we have Covid parties so we can get it all over with?

Colds aren’t fun, but they seldom kill.

And then the unvaccinated adult fools can simply *go to hell* when they catch it, get seriously sick, and die.

Your thoughts?

Across the Bound’ry Lines / Across the Color Lines

I wish more white working-class Americans agreed with these thoughts. But, sadly, many seem to be following right-wing, racist propaganda and find that immigrants are their enemy, rather than the handful of billionaires who own more wealth, combined, than the bottom 50% of the world’s population.

The lyrics are in the tradition of Woody Guthrie: borrow a tune that’s quite singable and well known, and change the lyrics either a little or a lot to push anti-racist, pro-working class point of view. Gary, the author of this version, worked as a coal miner in West Virginia.

The tune is ‘Silver Threads and Golden Needles’, which also inspired these revised lyrics.

.

We don’t want your patriotism, with a flag on ev’ry tomb

We don’t want the war you promise, to lead us to our doom.

But you think we should be happy, with your medals and your fame,

To shoot our fellow workers, in the imperialistic game..

.

Bosses’ lies and racist poison cannot bend this heart of mine

Solidarity forever, across the bound’ry lines!

You can’t buy our love with money

‘Cause we never were that kind,

So we raise our fists in unity across the bound’ry lines.

.

We don’t want your racist bullshit, from your genocidal brains,

We don’t want our class divided, while you bosses hold the reins.

But you think we should be happy, in our color-coded chains

Confused and more exploited, while your profit margins gain.

.

Bosses’ lies and racist poison cannot bend this heart of mine!

Solidarity forever, across the color lines!

You can’t buy our love with money

”Cause we never were that kind,

So we raise our fists in unity across the color lines! (2x)

Vaccines Save Lives. (Duh.)

This graph from today’s NYT shows why.

Was the COVID risk overblown?

I have seen people claim that COVID wasn’t any worse than the flu, and that the toll from the disease was smaller than the number of people killed in traffic accidents each year.

Is that correct? Sources of data on deaths from all kinds of causes are easy to find. I will limit myself to the US.

Let’s see:

Today’s WorldOMeter says the US has had 666,627 deaths since the start of this pandemic, starting almost exactly 18 months ago (mid-March of 2020 to 9/7/2021).

That number of deaths, divided by 18 months, works out to a monthly death toll from COVID of about 37,000 per month.

Flu, however, takes roughly a full year to kill that many.

If we multiply the 37 thousand by 12 months, you get 444,000 killed by COVID in a year.

Flu’s Toll over the Past Decade

The CDC says that up to but not including the pandemic, influenza has inflicted, per year:

between 9 million and 45 million illnesses

between 140,000 and 810,000 hospitalizations

between 12,000 and 61,000 deaths (so by WorldOMeter’s numbers, COVID has been between 6 and 37 times more deadly)

Traffic deaths

For automobiles, the annual death rate had been about 36,000 people killed per year (up until 2019, and not including any pandemic months)

So COVID is more deadly than traffic accidents of all sorts by a factor of about 12 to one if we use WorldOMeter’s data.

Covid’s Toll

Now let’s compare those figures with the ones from COVID. I think you will see that COVID has been in fact much more dangerous.

Over the past 18 months, the CDC (as opposed to WorldOMeter) says we have had:

120.2 Million Estimated Total Infections (this includes both those who did NOT have any symptoms, as well as those who DID; this can’t really be compared to the figures for the flu)

101.8 Million Estimated Symptomatic Illnesses (since this is more than a year, to be fair, we should adjust by a factor equal to the ratio of 12 months to 18 months, or 2/3. Doing so, I get about 67 million symptomatic COVID infections per year, which is between 2 to 6 times larger than for the flu!)

6.2 Million Estimated Hospitalizations (adjusting as before, this is like 4 million hospitalizations per year, which is between 5 and 29 times worse than the flu)

767,000 Estimated Total Deaths (this is like 511,000 deaths per year – between 8 and 43 times worse than the flu!)

So, those arguments are full of nonsense, to put it politely.

The risk was NOT overblown.

I wish everybody in the US and abroad was permitted to take the vaccine, and did so!

I want this to be over.

======================================================================

My sources were:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html regarding influenza

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html for COVID-19

https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot for automobiles

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/#graph-deaths-daily for WorldOMeter’s estimates

A Republican Congressman Who isn’t a Wacko!

Who is he?

A few hints: He voted to accept the results of the 2020 vote, AND to impeach Trump.

He also represents the same district that Justin Amash and Gerald Ford used to.

He also is being attacked by the Trumpisters and is resigned to the fact that he may be a one-term Congressman.

He had a long interview at The View. I found reading the transcript somewhat hopeful — perhaps more Republicans will snap out of their craziness. I am cutting and pasting some of the most trenchant paragraphs.

============================

Peter Meijer (the Congressman): … the rhetoric and the narrative in the public was wildly out of step with what more serious minds were discussing in the halls of Congress. A lot of my colleagues who were planning to object to the Electoral College certification, most of those objections hinged upon an interpretation of Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution, around the time, place and manner of elections, and how state legislatures had primacy in determining electoral processes. Now, it was an argument being made selectively against six states that the president had lost, and not being made in a dozen plus states that he had won. So I had issues on the consistency.

But a lot of the folks who were arguing to not certify the Electoral College results — and specifically, Arizona and Pennsylvania ended up being challenged with a Senator joining, so they were brought to the floor. It wasn’t that this was a massively fraudulent stolen election. It was much more grounded arcane basis, but with the understanding that this is an attempt for us to talk more about the process. That was the feeling inside the chamber. Those were the conversations. And then contrast that with President Trump’s Twitter account, and you see how two worlds of thought emerged. The world that said, this was actually a landslide victory for Donald Trump, that it was all stolen away and changed, and votes were flipped in Dominion Voting Systems.

And then you just go into the fever swamp of conspiracy theories. That’s what a lot of the supporters of the president were told. And that’s where some could argue, oh, when we meant stop the steal, we just meant, again, we don’t like these electoral process modifications. But that’s not how it came across.

Michael Barbaro (interviewer): Well, congressman, you sound like you’re being quite sympathetic toward your Republican colleagues in the House who chose not to certify the results. Do you think that those arguments and sentiments were genuine on their part?

Peter Meijer: I think, for some, absolutely. Again, I have disagreements. I do think some arrived at those conclusions in a genuine way. It’s —

Michael Barbaro: Because I think their support undeniably contributed, along with the president’s claims, to a pretty widespread consensus among Republicans that was baseless, right? That the election had been fraudulent. You really don’t think that they were operating primarily out of fear of their constituents and of the president in making these objections?

Peter Meijer: I’m not going to speak to what’s in their hearts. I know that I was watching the president’s speech on January 6. I was watching the speeches that came before it, the threats from members of the Trump family that if we didn’t object and try to change the results — there was a tremendous amount of political pressure. […]

Going into the Electoral College certification, I thought it would be one of the toughest votes of this term because of how many people were calling in and sharing, oftentimes easily disprovable, Facebook screenshots or sending a report. And I’d say, well, I’ve read this and I’ve looked into these citations, or I’ve actually called that clerk — and just how much got amplified. And it was a kind of a game of factual whack-a-mole. You would push back on one thing, such as, well, 60 of the 61 cases that the Trump campaign brought, they lost. And the one they won was very minor, and I think it was a temporary stay.

And then the pushback is, well, they were dismissed due to a lack of standing. OK, I mean, that’s a response, but that’s also not a good response. Well, here was all the widespread fraud? Well then, how come even the president’s lawyers were not arguing in court that there was fraud?

And you just find me a law enforcement body that has actually substantiated any of this, an investigative body, a court of law, anything that we can point to in a credible manner. But the point is, I mean, a lot of our constituents felt that this had been a stolen election because people they looked to and trusted told them that it was.

Michael Barbaro: Right, including congresspeople.

Peter Meijer: Including members of Congress.

Michael Barbaro: You seem to be nibbling around the edges of this, but I just want to state it really clearly. You saw a distinction in what your Republican colleagues in the House were up to. They were concerned about a process, frankly mail-in voting during a pandemic and whether it was done properly. But the way their concerns were being interpreted by their voters — and alongside the president’s public claims — was that a massive fraud had been perpetrated, Joe Biden’s victory was fraudulent.

And I just have to say it feels to me that many of these colleagues of yours must have known that that would be the impact. You can’t really divorce what they’re doing from what the president is doing and say, oh, they had a higher minded approach to this.

Peter Meijer: There’s a reason why I voted to certify both. There’s a reason why I signed on to a surprisingly cross-ideological letter stating why we believe that the challenge process was unwise. I think the individual arguments — I understand how some could make it. It was when the collective argument became something completely different. The whole was a more dangerous version of the sum of its parts.Michael Barbaro

I’m sensing that very early on, you are already figuring out how to navigate your way in a Republican Party where you and your views are in the minority.Peter Meijer

There was immense pressure. And again, I don’t want this to come across that any one individual’s vote was influenced solely by one thing or the other. But I had colleagues who were resigned to the fact that they may get primaried because they wouldn’t vote to object to Electoral College certification in one state or another, that this would guarantee them they would fall on the wrong side of an out-of-office Donald Trump, who has hundreds of millions of dollars in the campaign account.

I had another colleague who expressed concern about that colleague’s family and their safety if he voted to — how he were to be interpreted if he voted to affirm a stolen election. So I think there was just a ton of pressure from a variety of angles. And myself, I had consigned myself that this would be probably a potentially fatal — I thought I could survive it — but a potentially fatal political vote.

[He describes at some length the horrors of being in the Capitol on January 6, then finding out the Capitol has been breached and then having to hide with the rest of the members of Congress for their very lives. Afterwards:]

Peter Meijer: I had hoped that folks would see, I mean, just the fire that was being played with. And then I think several senators did. I mean, many of the objections that had been raised were withdrawn.

Michael Barbaro: But not many House members.

Peter Meijer: There were a handful. And I get it. I mean, the names were signed. Right? The statements had been put out. They had been talking about it on social media. It wasn’t the easiest thing to undo. But let me put it this way. There were a number of folks who got up on the floor and gave the same speech that night, while there was a crime scene investigation and a dead woman’s blood drying a couple of feet outside the door, they were giving the same speech that evening they had written this morning. Maybe a throwaway line about condemning political violence.

But I mean, just the dissonance, it was staggering.

Michael Barbaro: Right. Let me ask you this. Were you disappointed by the number of House colleagues who, after what had just happened that day, after their own lives had been threatened, went on and voted to object to Biden’s win?

Peter Meijer: I think there was just a disbelief. I get the sense that sometimes, especially if you’re running in a district where winning the primary means you win the general, you get these feedback loops. And where —

Michael Barbaro: But you’re talking — you’re talking politics, and I get that. But I’m asking if you, in your heart of hearts, were disappointed.

Peter Meijer: Yes. Yes. Can I go back to politics?

www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/living-in-the-age-of-the-white-mob

Sadly, racist White mob violence has defined this country much more than progressive movements for most of US history.

COVID daily deaths around the world

Please bookmark this page: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

It gives all sorts of data on infections, recoveries, testing, deaths, and so on from all over the world. If you look at it, you will see that none of MangoMussolini’s boasts are correct, and that some nations seem to have ‘beaten’ the virus — at least for now.

(Yes, I know, all data is somewhat suspect, and some countries are probably low-balling their numbers. But this is all the data we have.)

I will share some graphs I copied from that source, so you can see which nations appear to be doing a good job at shutting down the current pandemic. I will first show the world, then the USA, then about a dozen nations, arranged alphabetically. You will see that the US is very, very obviously not one of the countries whose leadership has been able to defeat this disease.

I will also share the number of deaths per million people.

0. THE WORLD:

This is for the entire world, and it’s deaths per day, as of today, August 4, 2020. Deaths are not going down. Worldwide, we have lost 90 people per million to this disease so far.

1. THE UNITED STATES:

The vertical scale is obviously different from the one for the world. As you can see, deaths from COVID in the US are now about 1000 per day, and rising. The US has lost 481 people per million so far.

2. BRAZIL:

Brazil’s deaths never declined. They have lost 446 people per million.

3. CHINA:

That big spike in the middle is when the Chinese regime discovered they had left out a lot of COVID deaths. Since that time, they have had very, very few. They have lost 3 (yes, THREE) people per million so far.

4. FRANCE:

Another country that successfully beat back the pandemic. They have lost 464 people per million so far.

5. GERMANY:

As did Germany. Their total dead work out to 110 per million people so far.

6. INDIA:

India, on the other hand, has not been successful. Deaths are increasing steadily; also, it would not be surprising if a lot of them are not even being counted. They report 28 people dead per million so far.

7. ITALY:

Italy was hit hard, and hit early. However, its daily death rates appear to be going in the right direction: down. Their toll is 582 dead per million.

8. MEXICO:

Mexico’s death rates do not appear to be going down. One might wonder if all of the COVID-19 deaths are even being counted. Their death total stands at 372 per million.

9. RUSSIA:

These figures are not going in the right direction. Plus, there are protests in Russia because folks in their Far East have evidence of serious undercounting. Their toll is 98 dead per million.

10. SOUTH AFRICA:

Not going in the right direction. Their toll is 144 per million.

11. SPAIN:

Like Italy, Spain was hit hard and early, but the daily death tolls now are approaching zero. Their death toll is 609 per million, one of the highest in the world.

12. SWEDEN:

Unlike the rest of Scandinavia, Sweden decided not to lock down at all. While the death rates are going down, they are doing so much more slowly than in most other European (and Scandinavian) nations.

Their death toll is 569 per million, one of the highest anywhere.

13: UNITED KINGDOM (BRITAIN)

The United Kingdom (aka Great Britain) was hit early, and its daily death toll is going down much more slowly than in other European nations.

Their death toll is 680 per million, which is, again, one of the highest anywhere.

===============================================================

I don’t think you will guess the nation with the highest total COVID death rate per million, so I’ll just tell you: it’s tiny San Marino at 1238. Next come Belgium (with 850) and the UK (with 680).

Here is a table listing the top 17 nations. Being in this group is not a good thing.

Rank	Nation	Deaths per million
1	San Marino	1,238
2	Belgium	850
3	UK	680
4	Andorra	673
5	Spain	609
6	Peru	600
7	Italy	582
8	Sweden	569
9	Chile	507
10	USA	481
11	France	464
12	Brazil	446
13	Sint Maarten	373
14	Mexico	372
15	Netherlands	359
16	Ireland	357
17	Panama	346