[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by Dan02

I think the country is as safe as it ever was in Saddams regime.

The average Iraqi on the street would whole heartedly disagree with you. Under Hussein the Iraqi people had no fears of going to the market and being killed in an act of random violence. A civil war did not exist under Sadam. Like it or not, he held the country together and got the Iraqis all on the same page. Also, under Hussein the Iraqi people had the infrastructure required to live a modern life. Social services were available under the tyrant, but are not available in the "democracy". Iraq is still the most dangerous spot on the planet right now, and ever independent journalist who has come out of there in the past year says as much. The green zone is marginally under control, the rest of the country is at war.

True there are more terrorist attacks but now they don't have to worry about the government nearly as much.

Zero terrorist attacks to a dozen a day. Yeah, that's a pretty dramatic change. Also, the Iraqi people still fear the government, because it is ineffective and things are still run by the American military. I'm not sure how much you would think of your government if you had soldiers breaking into your house any time they like, regardless of what you have done. In this regard, very little has changed. When we have had incidents like Abu Ghraib, Falluja and Haditha going on, and no one within the chain of command losing their head, very little has changed for the Iraqi people.

I do not recall where i saw this tid bit.

Let me jog your memory.

But apparently the war has saved numerous Iraqi lives.

If you actually believe that, I have a bridge in Minneapolis to sell you.

It was estimated more would have died under saddams rule then under the conditions currently existing in the country.

Where did that flawed math come from? The Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institute or the Council on Foreign Relations? The numbers do not support that claim what so ever. Consider that the war is 4 years old and, according to iraqbodycount.net, the numbers of Iraqi dead are at minimum 70,000, that is an astounding 17,500 deaths per year. It was estimated, by Human Rights Watch, that Hussein killed 50,000 from 1992-2003, with a range of 2,000 to 4,000 a year. Anything prior to that (Anfal and the Shia massacres) were not included, as the potential for the removal of Hussein in 1991 was there for ther taking, the United States, and its allies, elected not to do so for reasons of regional stability. What is ironic is that the sanctions placed on Iraq after the Gulf War killed more Iraqis than Hussein did in all the time he was in power. But those numbers no one wants to bring to light either, because it casts our support of our political leaders, and their decisions, in a very bad light.

I really struggle to see how anyone can support this military action. It was illegal from an international law perspective, and it was immoral from pretty well every perspective out there. It has gone worse than anyone could have imagined, and the costs have been to the point where identifying numbers on money spent, money lost, people killed, people displaced, and lives destroyed will be impossible to account. Vietnam will be a spec on the map compared to Iraq. America will be paying for this error in judgement for decades to come.