Not a fact; your opinion.

I wouldn't take it as gospel either. Generally, anti-war groups have a history of not being overly concerned with credibility (e.g. the Winter Soldier Investigation)

Exactly. 50% reliability is probably asking too much.

I see. So basically you pulled the number out of the air based on your "expert" opinion and dropped it into your post as a fact. I thank you for your honesty in admitting this.

Bush did not go into Iraq because of a tie to Al-Qaida. Iraq is simply one battle in the war on terrorism. If you think that Saddam was not a terrorist, did you forget about his invasion into Kuwait, or his use of WMD on the Kurds?

Well, I am sure that President Bush's advisers brief him on all the ramifications of going into Iraq, but maybe you should write a letter seeking a cabinet position, because you have such insight.

Once again, with your cabinet position you have known that he didn't have a plan for this, you could have told the military leaders that they were overlooking this strategic fact. I guess you already knew what the plan was from your post, so you should have alerted them to this fact. We as of today have not "left Iraq in ruins". The U.S. is building schools, hospitals, the Iraqi economic infrastructure as we speak. The liberal media will never report on this because it is not good for their cause.

We had no way to 100% sure that Saddam didn't have WMD unless we invaded, or do you not understand that point. Saddam wasn't letting U.N. inspectors in to investigate, so I guess we should have just asked him for his word that he didn't have any WMD? Instead we went in enforced the U.N. resolution that Saddam was in material breech of 13 years and liberated a country.

Ask the 25 million FREE people, after they vote for a new President in their new democracy, if it was a disaster. Ask the women and children that are not being tortured everyday, if it was a disaster. What about all the U.N. humanitarian aid that the people of Iraq are now receiving, if it was a disaster.

Well, I guess another good catchphrase might be:" Kerry....all medal, no honor."

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Thinking like an Independent, while leaning to the right.

Not so remarkable. To my knowledge, even international law does not require this.
Yes, and they would seem to care very much. From their perspective, a higher civilian body count translates as more political points scored.

Marc Herold, the activist behind Iraqbodycount.org organized a smiliarly ghoulish project during the Afghanistan campaign. "He produced a figure of almost 3,800 civilian casualties, and his methodology was immediately criticized by many for taking reports from unreliable media sources at face value and for double-counting some incidents. An independent analysis by the Los Angeles Times found 1,200 or fewer civilian casualties."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...2/554awdqo.asp

The premise for war was based on evidence collected before Bush was elected. The premise for war was to enforce the U.N. resolutions that Saddam was in material breech of for over 13 years. The premise of war was to remove a sadistic genocidal dictator that was a threat to humanity.

So because Saddam was not in New York harbor with a nuke strapped to his back he was not an imminent threat? He was an imminent threat to the neighboring countries, he was a threat to U.S. interests, he was a threat to humanity. How can you not see that.

Well in a word....YES. The major point being creating a safer Middle East, and democratizing a country. Force was needed to accomplish this task. The people of Iraq are now free to elect their own government officials.

Kerry would have never done anything about Saddam, just like Clinton didn't, sans lobbing a few missiles at vacant buildings on the outskirts. Kerry would just finish up what he was scared to do himself. He is more worried about his political career, and his Senate voting record shows that, then he is about U.S. foreign policy. If it wasn't for President Bush's actions Kadafi would have never given up his WMD. Terrorist now see that the U.S. has a strong President in charge, someone who will not back down to political pressures, or to let other countries decide what the U.S. should do. Russia has now vowed to join the war of terror, see a pattern here? How many more terrorist acts is it going to take for the liberals to see that this is real?

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Thinking like an Independent, while leaning to the right.

And a lot arnt - http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/ -

I am just guessing on this...but maybe you wouldnt be so mad if Bush was killing and torturing your family members and fellow countrymen...am I wrong?

Maybe...but none of them were conscripted. What did they think they were getting into when they joined the military?

But they are motivated to inflate figures nontheless, and no one is watchdogging them. They are biased, so yes, I discount them.

Both of which are biased. It is in their best interest to make the figure look as high as possible.

Liberals would never accept Rush Limbaugh as a source...why do you expect us to accept these liberals groups as a source?

Then I guess you were pretty mad at Saddam Hussein back in 1992. He actually tried to do part of what you are talking about. He and his sons arranged a failed attempt to assassinate the first President Bush!

So, perhaps we SHOULD have been "pretty fighting mad"!! I know I was.

Tell me again why we shouldn't have gone in to take out Hussein?

On the other subject here. Bunches of you folks are throwing around all kinds of civilian casualty counts.

What I would like to see is you define the word "Civilian"! To you, (and these so called Anti-War groups) is it any Iraqi NOT in a military uniform?? If so, then that makes all of the members of these terrorist groups, misnamed "Militias" and "God's Armies", civilians!! So by your count, there are NO Iraqi terrorists, murderers, fighters? Everyone over there is a civilian? Even those using rocket propelled grenades and Klashnikov weapons?
How facetious and self deceiving can you be?

Although it is not a current event, we cannot forget that we helped hussein get to where he ended up, plain and simple.And why did saddam want to assassinate FORMER pres bush? Why didn't he want to take out clinton?

A person is an civilian if they are not part of any army, militia or whatever you want to call it. This should make it easy to get "body counts" of civilians. BUT why do you seem to think that trying to defend your country is a bad thing? What if someone didn't like hussein but doesn't like the war either? Just their tough luck?

How do you presume to judge me as self decieving when you don't know me?I thought the premise of the board was to get opinions and maybe information, i'm not worried about being right or wrong. i think it would be best to stick to the conversation and leave personal judgements out of it. Thank you.

Fairly straight-forward I thought...

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The last time this country mixed politics with religion, people got burned at the stake.

Your own words label you as "self deceiving". Example:
"WE", the U.S., did nothing of the sort. We gave intelligence reports to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. We gave insignificant materiel support to Iraq, compared to the massive amounts of weaponry and funding from others, such as thew Soviet Union and France.
Our minimal support of Iraq, AFTER Saddam Hussein was entrenched in power, was very understandable considering Iran had become our enemy after kidnapping our embassy officials and holding them for 444 days!

So the label "Self Deceiving" is born of your own statements, obviating a need to "Know you".

And just how do you distinguish among the dead when all are wearing the same civilian clothing? And also, since it has been reported that MOST Iraqis own weapons, having a dead hand wrapped around a rifle certainly isn't a sure evidence of membership in a Terrorist Militia. So these "Humanitarian Groups" simply count ALL Iraqis dead as "civilians". That is a good reason to discount their tallies.

Your further statement;
pretty well defines your attitude. So, since you aren't worried about being "right or wrong", does that mean we should take your statements with a grain of salt?

By the way. These terrorist groups, murdering their own citizens indiscriminately, are not "defending their country! They are fighting to assume power themselves over their fellow Iraqis. Otherwise why would they murder them to "Defend" them?????????

Self deception at it's utmost!

They know that if they stopped pulling the trigger, we could get the place rebuilt and get out of there. The longer they fight us, the longer we're gonna stay.

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Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous.
Thomas Sowell, 2004