Is Baghdad really safer post-Saddam? Don't be ridiculous.

Darfur, for example.

North Korea, for example.

Or, we could all be intellectually honest and admit that the two biggest factors in our invasion of Iraq are given little, if any play.

This administration wanted desperately to remake the entire middle east. The remnants of this idea are now only given play when talking heads assert that we needed to go to Iraq as a deterrent to Iran. Of course, whether the invasion has been good for the nascent democracy movement in Iran or whether it has radicalized and militarized the situation more is up for further debate.

Also, we went into Iraq for a deadly combination of revenge and inertia. We wanted to attack someone, someone more than the crumbling Taliban. And we had the plans to invade Iraq just sitting there, and an administration chock full of folks who were still determined to prove that Bush's father had done the wrong thing the first time.

 

2muchcoffee - how can you expect to engage in debate when you scurry around telling people to "shut the fuck up"?

Why is it that you feel entitled to tell people who disagree with you to "shut the fuck up"?

What was the defect in your childhood that led to such a twisted viewpoint?

(BTW - I don't get a red x - I see a graph)

 

I am doing my best to remain collegial and courteous.

I also see a red x.

 

I get a red X too.

 

Here is the link to the graph that is supposed to be pictured

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7050/620/1600/Iraq%20Pre%20and%20Post%20Saddam.2.jpg

Sorry but I still see the graph.

 

Chris, I got this back from the link:

Forbidden
Error 403

 

you know, you are right. Iraq was much safer with Saddam in power.

The 148 people he was convicted of butchering to death might argue, but screw 'em. They're dead anyway, what do they know.

The 1,000's of Kurds he gassed? Hey, what's safer than a coffin?

Saddam Hussein = a safer Baghdad

???

some of you are idiots.

 

2much, you ever plan on responding to this? You look pretty friggin' hypocritical calling people out, then ignoring it when someone clearly refutes you.

 

Would you have preferred STFU?

Ah, yes, another of your favorite tactics: when the argument is one you can't win, you attack the poster.

So here's the saw that cuts your limb off. It comes from a study first reported in The Lancet, one of the oldest and most-respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world:

http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf

And for the record, infant mortality rates in Iraq were dropping ... until the international sanctions were put in place after Desert Storm.

http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1999/08/cmrirq.html

As the UN Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues noted in 1998, "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."

 

Big Space --

Is it your contention that Iraqi civilians aren't dying in huge numbers right now?

Have you looked at a newspaper in the past three months?

 

is it your contention Iraq has a dictator who slaughters any and all, including children, on his whim? do you read newspapers?

 

Here's some data from The Lancet's second study of mortality rates since the invasion, as summarized in the Wikipedia article on the topic of the two studies: