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Originally Posted by Ustwo
When you 'far exceed' the UN estimate, which is not known for being 'conservative' in the traditional sense of the word, odds are you are in the 'pulling numbers out of our ass' school of research.
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Then you don't consider the UN's estimate of a million dead Iraqis due to sanctions/Saddam prior to the war to be accurate?
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
And the fact that the recent NIE and other intelligence data concludes that our invasion and continued presence in Iraq has, in part, created and continues to create more attackers is to be ignored?
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Well this is it, and part and parcel of the original
non-rhetorical question. Thousands of Americans, Brits, Spaniards, Aussies, Indonesians, Turks and other have died due to terrorism within Iraq and terrorism in Europe and Asia.
But again, I'm not asking anyone to say "oh, crap, I'm a fool for supporting the invasion". I'm only asking people to consider what they consider to be acceptable losses. The military - that organization often criticized by people both for and against the war - asks that question of themselves, why should not the public?
If the figures presented in Lancet are to be believed, might this whole adventure might not have been better resolved by simply dropping a nuke on Basra, for example? And would that have been an acceptable course of action?