'US seeking to rewrite Iraq war history'

The US is seeking to redeem itself after the "horrible" Iraq war but has no qualms about changing history to achieve this, says justice and political activist Dahlia Wasli.

Washington continues to ignore studies by independent organizations questioning the accuracy of the US military's tally of the civilian death toll in Iraq, Wasli told Press TV on Saturday.

"I guess in any empire, we like to rewrite history to make ourselves look good. This is just another step in declaring 'mission accomplished,” she added.

"This was the first statement by Bush back in 2003 that which have done what came to do. Now Barack Obama has made his mission accomplished comment."

While the US military claims 77,000 Iraqis were killed between January 2004 and August 2008, a former Iraqi lawmaker has dismissed the figure, protesting that the estimate is misleading as it does not include assassinations and victims of US military operations.

In 2006, a study conducted by the British medical journal The Lancet, revealed that 655,000 Iraqis had died in the war. The Opinion Research Business (ORB)'s study, similarly, put the number of post-invasion deaths at over 1 million.

"Basically what we have accomplished in Iraq is ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Lancet report, and you mentioned the ORB, these are legitimate scientific reports that estimate the deaths in Iraq at well over a million," the activist added.

"This is an effort by the US military to minimize its horrible impact on Iraq."