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"gave the impression he had something he wanted to keep hidden"

Yeah, that's sufficient justification to invade a country resulting in the death of 175,000 to 196,000 civilians.

Sauce.

Muslim terrorists accounted for ~20% of all US murders in 2001.

If snarky cherry picking is now legitimate argument:
How about 180,000+ iraqi civilians killed due to the american invasion?
Sounds like Americans ought to be banned from the rest of the world.

Wow, people like you are fuel for ISIS supporters.

You spread nothing but hate, and no-doubt preach violence against all Muslims.
Kind of reminds me of Hitler's vision of Jews, and dehumanising an entire race/religion.

Muslims like me can see a day coming when individuals like you push for a Muslim holocaust...
that is if you don't already count the genocide of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Myanmar Rohingya, and of course, Palestine.

The only way to stop a bully is to punch him in the nose, he respects nothing else...

Cool. So when are you going to punch Uncle Sam, and his puppet government in SK, in the face? Watching you American Exceptionalists go on about "the bad guys" is like watching Zombie Ted Bundy lecture Chris Brown for his bad attitude towards women.

Time and again it strikes me how unbalanced media coverage is with regards to reports on fatalities and risks of life in general.

In contemporary Iraq, for example, more than a thousand civilians are killed by acts of terror _every_month_ for quite a while now. The last day with more than a hundred civilian fatalities in Iraq is just two days ago. (Source: https://www.iraqbodycount.org/... )

And other risks of getting killed - like traffic accidents or contracting diseases - remain vastly more probable than falling victim to terrorism in some western city.

And yet, the media coverage plays along both with the terrorists who, of course, appreciate the amplification of their publicity and it works in the hands of those in the west who want to abandon freedom, claiming that such was necessary to "keep us safe".

I would like to ask the media to spend the same amount of air time on every single human who dies from an unnatural cause, maybe people and politicians would then see what the actually relevant risks are and address them rather than fantasizing about "wars on terrorism".

Where are the death squads and ditches full of dead bodies?

• https://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database#

Where are the crying survivors hoping to find their disappeared loved ones?

• http://www.cbsnews.com/feature/protests-over-police-violence/
• http://theantimedia.org/4-victims-come-forward-chicago-secret-prison-man-tortured-weed/

What is scary is that you even thin you can get away with asking the question given that the answer is so obvious.

Some Iraqis may have very well wished for the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power. That has no bearing on the misrepresentation of the intelligence by the Bush administration in order manipulate the country into going to war. It also has no bearing on the bungling ineptitude of the Bush administration in prosecuting that war and the subsequent occupation of Iraq.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Read Cobra II. It's a very balanced account of the planning and prosecution of the war. Rumsfeld micromanaged the military, and unfortunately for everyone involved he was grossly incompetent.

http://www.amazon.com/Cobra-II...

"Almost 1000 soldiers died!"

What about the Iraqis that just up above you claimed we were trying to save? Over 200,000 dead documented by Iraq Body Count. These deaths are all a result of the invasion of Iraq and the power vacuum which ensued.

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

"you learn from the mistakes and move on"

The U.S. borrowed the money to pay for the war. The final tab will be in the trillions.

http://www.reuters.com/article...

Tens of thousands of American lives have been shattered, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives have been shattered, millions of Iraqis have had to flee their homes, barbaric ISIS has taken over parts of the region that the Bush administration intentionally weakened. Iran has turned into a major player in the region. The war was a complete, unmitigated strategic disaster.

>So it would seem that the original rules may not, in fact, have had such sexless classes.

Seems to match reality. When it comes to be killed or to fight men always fall first.

During the titanic disaster, the survival rate for women was far higher than for men.

During war, palestine and Irak 11% of victims across all weapons types were Iraqi females and ww II soviet union report of 8.7 million military dead, however according to the(ADK) study total war deaths were 20.1 million males and 6.6 million females, a difference of 13.5 million more males

We did not kill "thousands upon thousands". The vast majority of deaths of Iraqis were — and continue to be — at the hands of other Iraqis. We killed very few, taking thousands of POWs — and releasing them promptly after we prevailed. The various counters deliberately omit this important distinction — either because it makes their efforts look silly, or because they sincerely can not. Either way, the fact remains — we took the country over very swiftly and shed relatively little blood.

Why no officer, all these dead people where here when I got here, nothing to do with me.

Saddam did not violate any ceasefire agreements in anyway that mattered to US interests.

Bzzz! Lying substitution #1: I said nothing about "mattered to US interests". Only that he did violate the agreement. This is an important distinction, because we can spend years arguing, what the "US interests are" exactly, whereas the fact of violation of agreements stands.

Yeah, the US hates dictators. You have to got to be fucking kidding.

Bzzz! Lying substitution #2: I sad mad dictators. Pinochet — our kind of dictator — for example, not only stepped down voluntarily (what sort of tyrant does that?), but also left his country as the South America's top economy.

Killing thousands upon thousands of people

Bzzz! Lie #3. We did not kill "thousands upon thousands". The vast majority of deaths of Iraqis were — and continue to be — at the hands of other Iraqis. We killed very few, taking thousands of POWs — and releasing them promptly after we prevailed. The various counters deliberately omit this important distinction — either because it makes their efforts look silly, or because they sincerely can not. Either way, the fact remains — we took the country over very swiftly and shed relatively little blood.

By ratio, it is a slaughter. 2,290 American soldiers died in Iraq. Compared to:

Documented Iraqi civilian war fatalities:
  115,713 [low end] - 126,337 [high end], mostly women and children.
Unofficial war dead count: 350,000
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Estimated deaths caused by depleted uranium radiation poisoning from DU munitions: ~1,000,000.
http://www.rense.com/general64/du.htm

American soldiers who received lethal doses of radiation from DU munitions: 11,000 as of 2005 (possibly as high as 50,000 now). http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/du_death_toll.html

If you want to talk about innocents being killed, the current guy is much worse. That, and he himself made the argument that he has the right to hit Americans with drone strikes without due process. Personally I'm happy with the one time that this has been done because that asshole had it coming, but it still sets a bad precedent.
Emphasis Added

More than 92,000 civilian deaths in Iraq via armed conflict from 2003-2008

4000 deaths by drone strike since 2004

Please! Get some facts straight there friend.

Blowing my mod points on this thread as you clearly need correcting.

And is that opinion based on a fair & accurate assessment of the UN's policies and methods, or is it based on what you've heard through the corporate run media outlets (and the opinions of those who read them)? Are you perchance from the US?

There was a very clear (to many non-US observers at least) rise of anti-UN sentiment in the US, which peaked around that time - a marked change from the decades of generally pro-UN feeling from one of its most important founding members. And it was a very clear sentiment - the UN was seen to be ineffective, dragging its heels, even obstructing what needed to be done.

But the fact is, Hans Blix was right, the UN Weapons Inspection Team was right, and the US-led "Coalition of the Willing" (which, I'm sad to say, my country was also a member of) was wrong. As a result, we saw an illegal, unprovoked invasion that ultimately resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of combatants, and over a hundred thousand collateral civilian deaths.

Have fun: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Whats your point? What on earth does that have to do with the leaks? No shit, lots of people die due to military, paramilitary action and civil instability during a conflict. This is the first I've heard of it being claimed a big secret...

Have fun: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Yes hundreds of thousands dead: the Iraq Body Count project lists 111,150 to 121,461 from 2003 to January 13th 2013. Their methodology is to use "...media reports of violent events leading to the death of civilians, or of bodies being found, and is supplemented by the careful review and integration of hospital, morgue, NGO and official figures." to quote them. As media access in Iraq over the last ten years could be described as poor and spotty at best, particularly during the periods of heavy fighting, the Iraq Body Count should be treated as the absolute minimum. The Lancet surveys estimate 654,965 (392,979–942,636 95% confidence interval) excess civilian deaths from March 2003 to June 2009. For this survey 1,849 randomly selected households were visited and asked about deaths in the 14 months before the invasion and about deaths since. Death certificates were asked for 87% of the time and when asked for were provided 90% of the time. So hundreds of thousands of civilians is clearly a easonable estimate, we just don't know how many hundreds of thousands.

Iraq was well known to have intense religious rivalries between Shia and Sunnis, after all Hussein was in the Sunni minority and derived considerable power from this rivalry. He augmented it with a brutal secret police that violently suppressed any opposition group including militant Islamist groups. Not only did Al-Qaeda have no operations in Iraq prior to the war, bin Laden even offered his assistance to the Saudis after the Iraqis had invaded Kuwait but was rebuffed. It was not until 2004 that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group declared itself aligned with al-Qaeda. The Taliban are in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan; their rule over Afghanistan was never recognized by Iraq. It was by only three countries: our allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, plus the United Arab Emirates.

We attacked Iraq despite there being no link to 9/11. If we wanted to punish the country responsible for 9/11 we would have invaded Saudi Arabia since 15 of the 19 terrorists were Saudis. We didn't attack Iraq because of WMDs. Other countries have active WMD programs and weapons, but the Iraqis had neither. Even supporters of the war have largely stopped trying to use 9/11 and WMDs as rationales for the war and shifted instead to liberating the Iraqis from Hussein. However there are dictators all over the world, some of whom are worse than Hussein. Yet we didn't attack them, we attacked Iraq. The question is why, and only Bush, Cheney, and high ranking members of his administration know the answer.

19,187 separate attacks? Can we get a citation for this? Or some methodology?

4.75 attacks per day in the world is a lot? Hardly.

You'll need to follow up on this yourself, but just to get you started.. . . .

If memory serves me, there are at least 20 countries experiencing either an Islamist insurgency and/or terrorism include: India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Yemen, and others.

577 glorious pages of incidents at Iraq Body Count (The observant among you will notice that attacks against Iraqis haven't stopped despite the US pullout, so no, the war didn't end.

Taliban Attacks 100 Times per Day

Afghanistan: Update. Daily reporting from Afghanistan indicates the Taliban have sustained at least 100 attacks and security incidents per day since the start of the spring offensive. That is a high number for a group supposedly on the ropes.

From 2010 - Afghanistan: 57 Insurgent Attacks a Day (the insufferable)

Negotiations are certain to be part of the mix in any attempt to resolve the crisis. The military situation is getting worse. There were 400 attacks in the past week in Afghanistan, 60 percent of them by roadside bomb There were over 1,000 roadside bomb attacks in April 2010, twice as many as in April 2009.

This number of attacks per day, some 57, about 34 of them roadside bombs, is breathtaking. That level of violence is what characterized Iraq in March, 2005, before the Sunni-Shiite civil war. The year 2005 was a bloody year in Iraq, and nobody but then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld doubted we were mired in a vicious guerrilla war.

That is only two countries out of the many marked by Islamist violence. What about Thailand?

Terrorism in South Thailand

Looking at the Thai news, one can notice that almost every day people are being killed or injured due to terrorist attacks in South Thailand. Federal Foreign Offices around the world warn tourists to visit these areas because of mortal danger

That doesn't include Iran's attempts to kill Israeli diplomats in Thailand, as they have in various other nations in the last several months.

Pity the Yezhidi.
The Vanishing Yezidi of Iraq

The worst incident occurred on August 14, 2007, when four coordinated truck bombs exploded in two Yezidi villages, killing at least 500 people and wounding more than 1,500. It was the second deadliest terrorist attack in world history after 9/11.

Of course there are plenty more mass casualty attacks. I'll leave that as an exercise for you. You could check out the Bali bombing, the 7/7 bombing, the Madrid bombing, plenty of markets being bombed in Iraq.

The US has been fortunate in that it has been able to foil many attempts by would-be Jihadis, but sadly not all, including the "workplace violence" of Major Hasan at Fort Hood (13 dead, 31 wounded). (May Justice be done upon him.)

Just a few recent reports from the US:
FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Countries with the greatest capacity to do harm, and the likely propensity to exercise that power should be under the greatest scrutiny.

Deaths in Syrian uprising: nearly 18,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_uprising_(2011%E2%80%93present)#Deaths

Deaths in US-Afghanistan War: nearly 18,000
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/aug/10/afghanistan-civilian-casualties-statistics

Deaths in US-Iraq war: approximately 110,000
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

So, while Syria certainly needs to be on the watch list, and it is very advantageous for the supporters of that regime to be unmasked and exposed, the Western governments do not get a free pass just because some people have concluded that they are not oppressive or dangerous to their own people.

An average Ali about $500-2500.

Well, at least little girls go for $2500

An average Ali about $500-2500.

Punishing them for the outcomes of their decisions amounts to punishing 12 randomly selected people for making the mistake of having a public address, or the mistake of living in the wrong country.

Hah! I see what you did there. We do punish people for living in the wrong country.

Many of those 10,000 supported the demise of the 3k, so I'm just fine with that.

The perpetrators were mainly Saudi, they trained in Afghanistan and the US public links all this with the war in Iraq - where a shitload of innocent people died, probably all of whom had nothing to do with 9/11. And even in Afghanistan a bucketload of innocent people died.
 
  Iraq body count
 
  Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan
 
But I can't seem to find a link for a war in Saudi Arabia, or the number of civilian deaths there.

Annihilated is a strong word, but http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ tells a pretty compelling story.

to kill about 5k military, the iraqis insurgents have seen a close to 100k casualties on "their" side (it is more complex, as insurgent probably are responsible for a fair share of the civilian casualties). http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

Anyway, even factoring in the factor, it is clear that insurgent are sustaining severe casualties to inflict minor damage to the organized military.

The right to free speech is not infinite. Especially when your speech infringes on the rights of others (try right to life of soldiers and CIA),

1) The revalations stemming from decoding the wikileaks cache are directly responsible for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq: http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/

2) 4483 US Military Deaths in Iraq in the last 9 years (498/yr): http://icasualties.org/

3) Documented civilian deaths (probably very conservative): 100k+ (over 11k/year) http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Plainly, it SILENCE that would cause death and destruction. In such circumstances, it is immoral, inhumane, and evil to keep the information secret. If anything should be a capital crime, it should be the failure to reveal information where such failure results in 1000s of deaths.

When I google "killed because of leaked cables", I end up with this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/02/cable-reveals-airstrike-killed-21-children-yemen/

But that's a story about our proud government killing 21 children in Yemen and how the information was contained in the cables. So instead of some theoretical bullshit about how the leak endangering soldiers, the truth is it will save 500 soldiers per year and we won't be responsible for 11,000 (min) civilian deaths per year in Iraq. Every person involved in leaking the cables deserves a Nobel Peace prize.

I call killing one million people in Iraq for oil and dollar supremacy irresponsible.

I call it irresponsible to inflate reported numbers of Iraqi deaths by an order of magnitude and to implicate coalition members as causing most of those deaths rather than AQI, Syria, and Iran. If we can't trust your judgment when it comes to getting simple, verifiable facts correct, why should we trust your judgment when it comes to an assessment of whether releasing the NATO documents would save lives rather than cause further bloodshed, especially when you haven't even seen the documents in question?

Err ... No. [wikipedia.org] Even Wikipedia (never a reliable source at the best of times and despite vigorous editing by various apologists),

Congrats, you just linked to various surveys of wildly varying accuracy, which talk about TOTAL casualties, as opposed to civilian. Iraq Body Count is an ancient website which I dont believe has ever been accused of being "too conservative", and is the source for that wikipedia quote. If you prefer, here is a direct link. Incidentally, in that VERY link you provided, Wikileaks (again, not a site that is ever accused of being pro-US) shows a number of 94,000 civilian deaths between 2004 and 2009, which squares with the 99k-108k (over slightly longer period) that I cited.

The credit for all war casualties is ultimately at the door of whomever started the war.

Congratulations, you just gave open invitation for insurgencies to start wholesale slaughter of civilian populations, knowing that ultimately they are our fault. Thats NOT how war-crimes work, and your sense of right and wrong are seriously twisted.

That is also why all casualties in Iraq are hanging around the neck of the "coalition of the willing" and its chief warmonger - USA - in particular.

So what do you say to the members of the Iraqi interim government as they continue to battle what are essentially insurgents, that because fighting has been continuous since the war started, that it is OUR fault and they need to direct their aggression at the US? Thats brilliant, considering the aid in combatting insurgents we're given. Im sure they would agree completely.

Your claim was that Iraq casualties were, quote: "far far far lower than in any prior war that I can think of" (emphasis mine).

No, if you had quoted honestly you would have included this part: CIVILIAN CASUALTIESfar far far lower than in any prior war (more honest emphasis mine), and while we're digging up prior posts YOUR claim is that there were some 800k civilian casualties in Iraq which is roughly 10x higher than either Wikileaks or IraqBodyCount indicate, and is by all measures much higher than even the combined total of civilian and military deaths over the last decade.

I pointed out several cases off the top of my head,

And completely disregarded the fact that you havent given clear figures showing substantial coalition-caused civilian casualties. I suppose if you want to throw the blame for ALL casualties on our side, then by your changing of the rules you win by fiat.

I will admit that I should not have said "All". But on double-checking my facts by a quick google ("revolutionary war civilian casualty count"), first hit pulled up this page, a collection of stats from various wars from the revolution till now (with sources); and it seems that there WAS one war with lower civilian casualties-- the first Iraq war. All others with figures on civilian dead show an astonishingly higher number of dead.

You know, I always knew that as a crowd we tend to be biased... but please, think critically about what I write before modding it down. Osama declared a war that left several thousand NATO-allied troops and civilians dead. America declared two wars that have left hundreds of thousands dead in retaliation. If you can't see that, and you don't understand that you're bring irrational. I'm not arguing right or wrong, I'm just stating facts.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

It should be noted that http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ lists civilian deaths caused by terrorist actions as well as legitimate military actions. It would be incorrect to assume that the numbers listed there are as a result of American action.

Just to put things in perspective, it should also be noted that UNICEF estimated that 250,000 children died from preventable causes as a result of Saddam Hussein's action or inaction as leader. Iraqbodycount.org estimates that the total number of civilian deaths to be anywhere from 100,000 to 109,000.

Perhaps bombing the guests at a wedding, which has happened at least twice in Afghanistan, would count as civilian deaths for you? http://www.google.com/search?q=wedding+party+afghanistan - to be fair, there have also been suicide bombs at weddings in Afghanistan.

At least for Iraq, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ has credible figures, and is quite conservative about how it counts deaths.

If you think there aren't real civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, you need to start reading news sites more widely.

I doubt it, given the 200+ year history of the US military

And then you proceed to give this link....

My short web search started here, which is where I would start reading if I was so inclined:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Note that includes, and is probably mostly, deaths from bombing attacks by suicide bombers. You say the military has been around 200+ years but with the period of daily car bombings suicide bombers have engaged in and the inordinate care the military takes not to harm civilians, I am pretty sure the suicide bombers are well in the lead at this point (over the U.S. military anyway).

>> However, how do you prove that you have killed a "fighter" or a "civilian?" They both wear the same clothes.

If you kill someone, then review their body, and find that they were not wearing a uniform, nor were they carrying any weapons, nor were they strapped with explosives, nor were there any weapons nearby, nor is their likelihood that they were directing others to engage in warfare, then they were a civilian.

These rules are pretty clearly spelled out in some treaties we've signed and ratified. Certainly some of the people claimed as civilians were not, but in some cases they most certainly were.

>> I would strongly suspect that suicide bombers have killed far more civilians than the US military has.

I doubt it, given the 200+ year history of the US military and relatively short history of suicide bombers, even taking into account 9/11.

>> # of civilians killed as a result of US military actions

There's no web source that cannot be dismissed by you or others as "biased", therefore there is no possible source to give you definitive proof. My short web search started here, which is where I would start reading if I was so inclined:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

..., we just gave them a place where American civilians wouldn't be endangered in the process.

Yeah, right, it's a good thing that only Iraqi civilians die.

Ich geh dann mal kotzen ...

It's your broken culture that produces the violence seen here. Sure, we have some problems with violence, but nothing remotely like what's seen there.

*cough* Yeah, we know. You've off shored that too.

I don't believe I've ever seen anybody so swallowed up in the media trap. You are so high on the blue pill you literally don't see beyond your own skin. One thing you do show, your politicians are made in your image... Thank you for a most educational perspective. Pero huele muy feo el pedorro

Sigh.... as always you have focused on the minutae in order to feel better about your cognative dissonance regarding the whole.

http://www.brussellstribunal.org/pdf/lancet111006.pdf
A million afgan deaths and rising

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Add another 100 000 and rising for Iraq.

divide by 3000 (deaths in 9/11)

yah, wait, i just did the math, I was wrong in my previous post. Now you do the math and figure out by how much

http://costofwar.com/
We also spend our childrens future while doing this.Well over 5 million dollars per enemy combatant death.

The red cross estimates that we kill 10 civilans for every combatant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio
The last time Israel went to war they killed 30 combatants for every civilian....

I hope these citations help/ Now please. Who has been charged? DId an act written in 1917 and never updated cover the internet do you think? How is this any different from the pentagon papers? Why are you not outraged about the NYT? Maybe because they would love to go beat the Feds in court again so they are trying to pick a fight they might be able to win. I also still await the reference to you claiming some nonsense about me thinking secrets are never needed. You certainly cherry pick when it comes to responses!

Terrorism is also threatening to blow people up just because you can. It's also threatening economic sanctions or embargoes if certain ultimatums are not satisfied. By this measure, the United States government is the largest and best funded terrorist organization in the world.

There are a variety ways we express it: an private diplomatic threat, a publicly implied threat, an threat of economic sanctions through the UN (while we ignore UN resolutions against us), military "exercises", CIA coups, and of course, the outright invasions and public threats of invasion.

America is like the local mafia that you have to do business with, or else you could end up like that guy down the street.

"Not one single Iraqi ever physically harmed an American outside of their sovereign border." I'd like to see your proof for that universal and categorical negative. Further, almost all of the Iraqis killed were killed by other Iraqis and not NATO troops (there isn't a great source for that statement but here are two: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War; http://www.iraqbodycount.org/). As for how many Iraqis Saddam Hussein killed? Estimates rage from the high 100 thousands to the millions: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/magazine/07MAKIYA-t.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=310195565a77e9ff&ex=1349409600&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss.

You may or may not agree with the war in Iraq (I certainly don't) but what is occurring cannot compare to what occurred before.

That's great that the Iraq War casualties are so low. Only 4,287 dead and 30,182 wounded. Of course that's not all the expected casualties. As of 2008, 20% of the 1.6 million vets from both wars are suffering from PTSD and it is expected that their post-combat suicide rate will produce more deaths than those KIA. Then there's the under/untreated TBI injuries, estimated at one in five soldiers. Then there's the little matter of the Iraqis, who have suffered anything from 100,000 dead to 650,000 excess dead (from just 2003-06) as reported in The Lancet. Then there's the cost of the war to the USA, estimated at $2.4 trillion by the Congressional Budget Office but this number is thought by other experts to be overly optimistic. For example, Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the cost to be higher than $3 trillion. Then there's the cost to Iraq. It was one of the most developed nations in the Middle East prior to the war, with ~90% of urban and ~50% of rural citizens enjoying access to modern water supply systems. Now, open sewers. Garbage pickup went from being efficient to being suicide by IED. Electricity has yet to match pre-war levels. One in three Iraqis now lives in poverty. Sectarian violence is still rampant. And we gave Islamic terrorist organizations a massive PR coup and recruitment tool with not only the invasion and occupation, but also the national disgrace of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, assorted covert torture destinations, and secret renditions. All this for a war that was in the planning stage by Sept, 2000. That's before the inauguration, and nearly a year before the 9/11 attacks. It was supported by intelligence that was badly out of date, circumstantial, and in many cases transparently fabricated like the yellowcake/spy outing scandal; the 81 mm aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment (which turned out to be tubes for conventional rocket bodies very similar to our own and wholly unsuitable to uranium enrichment and was pointed out in the original, unaltered intelligence reports that only White House officials got to see at the time but red-lined my bullshit meter when Powell mentioned it in 2003); and the laughably insane sooper sekrit anthrax production semi fucking trailers which was over the top obvious bullshit to anybody with minimal training in molecular biology. But you're right, we should be thankful that life-long fuckup W didn't fuck it up even worse.

As for AIDS, President Bush let ideology trump reality and wasted the money on a program that was at best ineffectual: "One of the White House's major aid initiatives, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), has wasted much of its funds on scientifically questionable programs designed to please American religious conservatives. Though studies show that only a comprehensive approach, including condom distribution, sexual education, and antiretrovirals, could reduce HIV, the White House insisted that PEPFAR spend one-third of its behavioral prevention budget on programs that promote abstinence until marriage. It also refused to let PEPFAR money go for programs like needle exchanges and aggressive condom promotion. Recipient nations had to sign an American pledge vowing to oppose prostitution, even though prostitutes are major carriers of HIV in Africa, and signing the pledge could scare PEPFAR recipients out of helping sex workers. Virtually no other major multinational donor agreed with PEPFAR's strategy. Even the administration's own inspector general responsible for overseeing aid couldn't prove that its methods had worked." As reported by CBS News. Heckuva job, heckuva job.

1.5 million people have died as a result of our attack on Iraq. White ones, brown ones, Americans, Iraqis, mostly civilians and many of them not from bombs but from starvation after the infrastructure needed for their water, food, and medical care was destroyed.

You will be relieved to know that those figures are almost certainly not true.

ORB's "million Iraqi deaths" survey seriously flawed, new study shows. More here.

Leftist billionaire George Soros underwrote the widely quoted Lancet study written by an anti-war professor. As time goes by it keeps looking worse, and worse.

The Wikileaks contents tend to undermine them as well:

The logs showed there were more than 109,000 violent deaths between 2004 and the end of 2009.

They included 66,081 civilians, 23,984 people classed as "enemy", 15,196 members of the Iraqi security forces, and 3,771 coalition troops.

Iraqi news site in english.

Also, the actual number of dead civilians is 100k I believe, not half a million. Note also that this number includes all civilians who died as a consequence of the war regardless of who directly killed them. All these 100k civilians were not shot/bombed by US troops, they may have been killed by Talibans. I'm not sure if this number includes people who died as an indirect consequence of the war, for example people who died of illness/hunger because the war may have made medication/food unavailable. If not, then the total number of civilian war casualties is higher and may in fact reach half a million.

It doesn't include indirect deaths from illness or hunger:

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

It is about 100k "documented civilian deaths from violence".

Playing the devils advocate... the tragedy that was 9/11 is up-to what, ~20K deaths and counting from over 90 countries. That figure puts the tragedy at around the annual death toll for sexually transmitted diseases on the US death toll lists. I don't think I am alone in saying that it would have been more positive and beneficial for the average American to prevent more lives being lost, decrease the US led future terrorist recruitment drive and instead invest several trillion US dollars into the other top 10 preventable diseases on that list that are going to kill Americans every year, anyay.

Well, its very difficult to estimate numbers for this sort of thing without doing some in depth research, but from just a quick scan of the internet:

Iraq War:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
- 97,000 - 106,000 Civilian deaths

Afghanistan:
http://icasualties.org/oef/
- A few thousand military casualties on our side, didn't see civilian casualties or taliban ones.

Cuban Revolution:
http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/forum/dominicans-abroad/latin-america/2203/VICTIMS-OF-THE-CUBAN-REVOLUTION
- Call it 85,000 deaths for the listed items.

"Several human rights organizations contacted WikiLeaks and pressed them to do a better job at hiding information that endangers civilians

How many of these `human rights organizations' are fronts for the US security services. Why is it they have not spoken up on the lack of human rights of the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed since the US invasion, or is it they don't count.

Number of my countrymen to be killed or wounded while Clinton nailed a fat secretary: 0. Number of my countrymen to be killed or wounded from the two wars started and unfinished during Bush's administration: 5,589 [washingtonpost.com] and rising.

Don't forget the Afghani and Iraqi civilians that were killed, either. For Iraq, Iraq Body Count currently gives a figure of around 100,000, and that's only those that are directly attributable.

There's the Lancet studies, too, which estimated the number of civilians killed in Iraq as a result of the invasion as ~650,000 in 2006 already. Extrapolate from there, and I'd bet it's more than a million now.

And that's just Iraq: we haven't said a single word about Afghanistan yet.

All this only serves to further strengthen your point, of course, but I felt it was important to point it out. ~5000 American soldiers having died is bad, yes. Millions of foreign civilians having died is even worse.

That's the kind of president we had for 8 years.

I certainly don't see anyone doing anything "WRONG", in regards to the rules of war.

And that to me is the most heartbreaking thing of all. That the "best practice" of warfare is to shrug and say, yeah, a few civilians get slaughtered even now and then, it happens. This is why many of us who opposed the invasion did so: because we could see that even "good guys" do awful things in a war zone, especially in an urban environment, double especially in an urban counterinsurgency, and if there isn't a world-shaking reason to be there, there's several hundred thousand now-dead reasons not to be there.

War: Even when you do it "right", you're doing it wrong.

Before making comments like that, you may want to check your numbers a bit better, because you just hit grand prize on the exaggeration scale... if you can bring positive proof that tens of thousands of Iraqi children have died as a consequence of this war, as well as proof that millions of professional Iraqi men even exist, then you my friend would almost certainly make the headlines in every major newspaper and station in the country

Do you think the major media outlets are in the habit of telling the truth about the Iraq War? From 2003 to 2008, about 9% of all violent deaths in Iraq were children. That brings the number of dead children to a minimum of 9,000, and that's the lowest estimate possible according to Iraq Body Count. If you believe the Lancet, that number could be as high as 54,000. This does not even begin to address infant mortality issues, or deaths caused by the deplorable conditions we created by destroying Iraq's infrastructure.

As to your comment about professional Iraqi men, that just illustrates your unbelievable ignorance. Iraq was one of the most secular, highly educated and literate cultures in the Middle East. It was one of the few places were women could receive an education. And yes, over two million Iraqis have fled their home country because of the civil war there, with millions more internally displaced. Most of these people are middle class citizens.

I'm just saying get your damn numbers right

I'm just saying you're an ignorant fuck. Full stop.

Oh, and you know what's funny, the professional Iraqi citizens were leaving the country at every opportunity even BEFORE the war! I think it had something to do with a very controlling leader, and a lack of well paying jobs... America has done nothing but made it a much more easy and pleasant process to leave. Sad but true.

Actually, it was the US sanctions that were strangling the country and killing half a million kids over a ten year period according to the UN. And no, the US has not made it easy to immigrate. There are less than 25,000 Iraqi immigrants in the United States. That's less than 3,500 per year.

you should be ashamed for badmouthing the hard working men and women who do serve, if anyone in your family really DID

I didn't say anything negative about anyone. I just said that while my grandparents both served in WWII, and two of their children served in Vietnam, I chose not to because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't providing safety or security to US citizens.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ - Documented civilian deaths from violence - 95,989 to 104,706. How many court martials would that be?

sooo 95,000-105,000 civilians dead, and 1034 US soldiers dead? It's probabaly not a bad thing to put thoes soldiers in danger, it'd even out the ratios a bit.

Let's show the world what the US can do when disaster strikes.

Yes.. let's

disaster - result

disaster - result

disaster - result? Still waitin' on that one.

As for Haiti? Look at who's been meddling all this time.

Us. We've been meddling, and not in a good way. We can't change the past, all we can do is try harder to do the right thing in the future.

Let's show the world what the US can do when disaster strikes.

Yes.. let's

disaster - result

disaster - result

disaster - result? Still waitin' on that one.

As for Haiti? Look at who's been meddling all this time.