when I started this blog five years ago, I was a pet sitter and the name animal-crackers made sense. now I'm a stay-at-home-dad and freelance writer, but rather than confuse everyone by getting a different blog, it's just easier to keep posting things here.

A study released by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad said that more than 600,000 people have died violent deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

"I don't consider it a credible report," Bush has said.

The study was based on interviews of 1,849 Iraqi families -- or 12,801 people -- in 47 neighborhoods of 18 regions across the entire country. According to these people, about 2.5 percent of Iraqi's population has been shot, exploded, bludgeoned, disappeared or nuggied.

Now, these 12,801 Iraqis have no reason to lie. They love us there. I've seen the pictures, which arrive fam-spam (mass e-mails from family members who otherwise would never write). Iraqis are hugging our troops and waving American flags -- as those ingrates should. So they're not lying.

And it can't be the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. After all, Baghdad is in Iraq and the Iraqi people love us.

So it must be the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This insidious group of liberal tree hugging croissant-eating queer-eye-for-the-straight-guy watching Christ-hating funkadelic-acid dropping pot heads hates our troops. Worse, they hate America.

Why do you hate America Mr. John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health?

And why oh why would the school -- which receives 25.2 percent of all federal research funds awarded to the 37 accredited US schools of public health -- want to lie?

I think I feel like answering my own question with another question: Why Mr. John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health does your name include "Bloomberg"?

Why?!? Because -- while the school was founded in 1916 with money from John D. Rockefeller, the most un-American of un-Americans -- it also has received a contribution from Michael Bloomberg, who was a successful businessman before becoming a Republican New York City mayor.

Don't you see? Spreading these lies about 600,000 Iraqis dying since we invaded is like hitting a wasps' nest with a stick. All the Muslims and Arabs around the world get stirred up and strike again -- maybe this time wiping out half of Manhattan. And Mayor Bloomberg has what he has always wanted -- a Rudolph Giuliani moment. Bloomberg will be the hero of the day, pulling together the survivors of the New York City Crater, and melding them into a political force sure to launch him into the White House, the only house in America where it's legal to smoke un-American Cuban cigars.

Damn you Michael Bloomberg!