This is a pretty well-presented post (for Craigslist’s rants and raves anyway). I’d like to take credit for it, but cannot. Someone else did a fine job with it.
Just wanted to put some facts out there:
It is estimated Saddam Hussein killed 600,000 civilians during his ~8000 day reign, an average of 75 per day.
http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=2400&msp=1242The 2003-present war has directly killed an estimated 60,000 REPORTED civilians during the 1436 days of the war, an average of 42 per day. Obviously, the unnecessary civilian deaths as a result of the war due to non-viloent means is much much higher. By 2004, estimates were already over 100,000- a rate of 182 per day.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7967-2004Oct28.html
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/In the 1990-1991 gulf war, there were an estimated 85,000 unnecessary civilian deaths (low estimate) as a result of the 211 day war. This takes into account malnourishment, etc. and not just violent deaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War#CasualtiesAs a result of the present war, there are an estimated 2 million refugees, and an aditional 1.8 million internally displaced Iraqis. That represents over 10% of the country’s population. That’s a whopping 2,650 Iraqis forced out of their homes and livelihoods per day. The US has generously offered to increase the number of Iraquis seeking asylum from 463 at present to 7,000 next year, almost 3 days worth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6362289.stm**************************************************************************
The only support that we can give our troops is to do all we can to bring them home to their families and loved ones as soon as possible outside of a body bag and hopefully with all their limbs. I am certian any soldier would appreciate coming home safe rather than knowing that people are attacking the “goddurn liberals” who are trying to end the war.
How do *I* feel about it? Well, I oppose the misspelling of certain, but otherwise feel that this is a pretty important point that needs to be made a bit more loudly, perhaps.
It’s turning out that our actions in Iraq, selfishly foisted by our leaders, are worse than Saddam, who we understood to be Evil incarnate. But as citizens (with our, I believe, good intentions) we hate to think we supported something more evil than Saddam because we were misled and lied to, so we hang onto the notion that it’ll get better. You hear it in the news from the right, with a sense of urgent desparation — “we *have* to win now, or the evil terrorists will sweep across the world.” It’s classic “last stand against evil” rhetoric. And it’s scary because we’ve been wrong before.
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