Did Bush manipulate Iraq data?

[Occhidiangela]

Yes, you did. War is war. When you invade an entire country, you attack all of its citizens - end of story.

The view of a simpleton. You really don't 'get' Modern Warfare at all. This war was NOT a war along the model of World War II, which is what you just defined. Were that so, I cringe to think at the body count, what with the lethality of air launced weapons. It is (it aint over yet by a long shot) a different sort of beast, and could be better understood as a limited war, though that too is a very inexact description. Similar to Korea, similar to Viet Nam, similar to Panama (1989) similar to Serbia (1999) and with its own character.

The Kurds, for example, were not attacked, yet they were citizens of Iraq. (A few did die due to some errors in Coalition air attacks, if I remember the news reports correctly.)

As to terror groups, the group (Al Masur? I forget the name at the moment) in the North was indeed a terrorist group, al beit not quite Osama's Homeboys. Just more garden variety terrorists, with, IIRC, ties to Iran.

The Iraq operation, the war, was a political gamble, as is any war. Let there be no mistake. The gamble was that more good would come out, in the long term, than harm, to both Iraq and the people there, and the US and its ability to influence stability in the region. Stability => prosperity, or so the logic seems to go.

In five years, we might have a clue as to how the balance sheet works out on that one. Maybe in three.

And the critics will snipe, in some cases for very good reasons, in some cases because that is all that they can do.

Sorry, and add on here. In re Imperial models: Niall Ferguson has written some very insightful pieces on the 'responsibilities of empire' which he postulates that America is, whether we want to call ourselves one or not. (One current euphamism is 'hegemon.') I won't say that I subscribe to everything he writes as being true or correct, but he presents some very interesting ways to look at global influence and what it implies.