whyBish,Nov 7 2005, 08:36 PM Wrote:When we were originally discussing the possibility of the war someone (Pete I think?) said that if the government knowingly misled the US public then there would be hell to pay. Hell seems pretty gentle these days. ;)
Even if the magic number this bloke came up with was 2 Million, or 10% of the Iraqi population, then the U.S. might start wishing they never joined in, but like Occhi said, what are the options from here, you can't change the past. "Oops, we probably shouldn't have gone into Iraq, sorry about the 2 million dead, we'll just be leaving now" ain't something likely to come out of the mouth of an American president, even less by the govt. that initiated the whole deal. And what can the public do, even if they wanted out? there isn't an election for another 3(?) years...
I don't agree with the U.S. rationale for going to war, But I am happy that Saddam was dethroned. With the high stakes in such an event, there will be bias from all sides, and once again I ask, what would knowing the exact number of civilian casualties actually achieve, even if it could be counted by a mutually agreeable definition?
[right][snapback]94346[/snapback][/right]
It could tell you some of how well the war went. Bloodless war is impossible, but it does seem like a good idea to get the war objectives done with as little extra deaths as possible.
That's what annoys me about the whole war, for whatever reason it was started, there's no excuse for some ugly bits of planning that seemed to happen. Some people are talking along the lines of "it was more expensive than we thought it would be", my tenth grade self when the invasion happened was thinking along the lines of "I wonder where we'll get all the money we need from for rebuilding". This awas based on a bunch of assumptions, and some high school/encyclopedia history.
I may be dead, but I'm not old (source: see lavcat)
The gloves come off, I'm playing hardball. It's fourth and 15 and you're looking at a full-court press. (Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun)
Some people in forums do the next best thing to listening to themselves talk, writing and reading what they write (source, my brother)
The gloves come off, I'm playing hardball. It's fourth and 15 and you're looking at a full-court press. (Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun)
Some people in forums do the next best thing to listening to themselves talk, writing and reading what they write (source, my brother)