The cholera wave sweeping through Iraq has killed again.

A woman has died of cholera in Baghdad, Iraq's health ministry says, the capital's first confirmed fatality in the country's recent outbreak.

The disease was first detected in northern Iraq last month.

Eleven others have died of cholera outside Baghdad, and at least 2,000 cases have been confirmed, the vast majority of them in the north.

The 40-year-old woman died on Monday after spending seven days in hospital. Her son is infected with cholera.

Over at the NewsHoggers Cernig properly points out that

The Fourth Horseman, pestilence, has come to Iraq and now Baghdad in the form of a rapidly spreading outbreak of Cholera. … adding to the problems of poor water sanitation, of course, are the lack of modern medical treatment and antibiotics that many Iraqis now suffer. If the Iraqis are really unlucky, the outbreak is of the antibiotic resistant 'O139 Bengal' strain first noticed in 1992. Even if it's the older strain, the last epidemic in South America, which began in Peru in 1991, caused 1.04 million identified cases and almost 10,000 deaths.

How can anyone describe this as success, four years and some into the occupation? Where's the surge to deal with this faceless and inhuman killer of innocents? Where are the billions in earmarked funds from the Bush administration?

Meanwhile, in news that’s really important to the “Very Serious People” in our intolerably dysfunctional Washington, Joe Lieberman (R-Tel Aviv) has managed to move us one step closer to killing a lot of Iranians.

Next step: Mr Bu$h designates the Iranian Army in toto as assisting those mythical “someones” who are allegedly making the EFPs that don’t look like Iran’s military weapons and Whining Joe gets his fondest wish.

Disgracefully, acting either from a drug-induced coma, or a very threatening set of candid photos kept in a safe in the White House, or some other incomprehensible reason, the following spineless Democrats voted once again to start another needless war against the wishes of their constituents:

Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Whitehouse (D-RI)

And look who has ducked out on yet another key vote to preserve the tattered remains of our democracy and freedom:

Not Voting
Obama (D-IL)