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actually, our bombs do a pretty damn good job of discriminating... we can put one through a window. i'd trust our air force with a precision guided munition from miles away and 20,000 ft in the air more than i would trust iraqi mortar rounds to mitigate civilian causualties. and we're not really dropping many of them now. most of the high value military targets that were accessible by air delivery have long since been destroyed or converted into something else. most of the life and death decisions are made these days are being made by soldiers on the ground.
i said i wasn't concerned about civilian casualty figures because it is impossible to have figures that reflect the reality of the circumstances each death. and we are being the civilized ones. WE are wearing uniforms. WE aren't planting roadside bombs. WE aren't opening fire on unarmed iraqis waiting to sign up for governmental employment. the moral miasma is frustrating.
if you'll read my post earlier you'll see that i consider every innocent iraqi's death to be just as tragic as the death of a US soldier. however, deaths of those who are terrorizing their fellow civilians and our soldiers are indistinguishable from those of the innocent. that is why figures of total deaths hold little value for me.
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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
~ Winston Churchill
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