os, how many of those deaths are part of Saddam's army and how many died because of terror attacks by those that still support him?

I am not saying the war was a good idea (bush needs to be heavilly medicated so he cannot attack another country), but the resulting freedom of the population of Iraq is a good thing. What Hugh said is right, time will be a good judge.

I say put Bush and Blair and their assistants/aides/abettors on the stand at the Hague. If they have nothing to be ashamed about, let the world find out under the scrutiny of the legal process with the assumption that they are innocent until proven guilty.

os, how many of those deaths are part of Saddam's army and how many died because of terror attacks by those that still support him?

43.47% - Saddam's army
56.53% - terror attacks by those that still support him


but the resulting freedom of the population of Iraq is a good thing.
What freedom? Do you read the same news as I do? I thought there is at least a civil war going on in Iraq right now.

Iraq has improved greatly over what it was under Saddam. Their is actual freedom and voting now. There is more hope, whenever Iraqis are polled over there they have very high numbers supporting the war. That our western media burys stories like this is sad. But the people themselves are happier, although they would like to see the Americans leave before too long.

Bush and Blair(and the Australian PM) will of course never be charged, but soldiers who torture will.

I think Bush, Blair or Howard should run the U.N!

I think Bush, Blair or Howard should run the U.N!

Unfortunatelly for you, and for those guys, UN is not an empire to be run by someone.

Absolutely right. Neither is it a functioning world government.

Absolutely right. Neither is it a functioning world government.Its charter, to which the U.S.A. is a signatory and guarantor, forbids that. Also, did you know that the U.S. Constitution requires that the government of the United States of America must completely live up to all its international obligations (treaties, pacts, agreements, etc.)?

Ummm, you lost me. Forbids what? As to your second point, I guess this means we can sue them over the softwood lumber issue!

The U.N. Charter forbids that it should be a world government. Clearly the great nation-states of the mid-20th century did not want to create an over-arching layer of government; they created a common set of rules and structures for international relations. The U.S. Constitution says that the U.S.A. is compelled to abide by its international legal obligations. As a signatory and guarantor of the U.N. Charter, they are constitutionally bound to abide by it. They have not been doing so.

That implies they've surrendered sovereignty to an international body. I suspect there would be U.S. constitutional experts that would give you an argument on that.

Nope. They have to live up to their international agreements. Plain as day. If they agree to something, they have to abide by that agreement. Simple.

Russia's government is nothing more than an authoritarian regime winning rigged elections, trying to somehow share power with organized crime. Bad example.

Stole my thunder ;)

Iraq has improved greatly over what it was under Saddam. Their is actual freedom ..... now.

Go and ask irakian women if they feel they have more freedom than before....Women's right in Iraq regressed, did not improve....and will not get back to where it was for a very long time....As Hugh says, only time will tell if it was the right thing to do. For now, personally, I feel it was wrong and, before it gets any better there, there will definitely be some pretty bad times.... for a very long time. Civil war is not ruled out, quite the opposite.... as there is 3 distinct nations there....The kurds up north, the sunnites in the center and the chiite in the south. The kurds were promised their own land a very long time ago, but the brits that actually shaped the middle east map a long time ago never lived up to that promise. Rather than give them their own territory, they splitted the kurd nation in 3 different sovereingn state....part of it in Iraq...One has to remember that democracy western style cannot work all over the world as it doesn't take into account cultural differences that sometimes are so radically different than ours that it is almost like we are trying to force aliens from outer space to adopt our ways...As for the comment on the US constitution that says that they have to respect the international agreements that they sign, it happens to be a fact and it is not by any means giving up the sovereignty. They signed, let them respect it and that goes for the lumber dispute we have with them...

The title of this thread has echoes of the same people who called Churchill a war monger in 1936 when he suggested the world should do something about Hitler and Germany.
How many lives could have been saved if the world would have been pro-active instead of reactive?

I think history will show that building a democracy in the heart of the Middle East will be major turning point. The US and UK have learned simply supporting the regime of the day has not worked in the past and have sought to change the region for the better.

Regardless facts are Hussein killed more irakians than Bush and Blair ever will.
More irakians are now being killed by the Sunni insurgents and foriegn fighter's than Bush and Blair.
27 million Iraqi's (women included) voting for a new democratic government on Dec 15th trumps the 10,000 or so people who preferred the life and luxury they were fortunate to have under Hussein's regime.

It is a tough process and only time will tell if Bush and Blair will be successful in nation building in Iraq, but truth is much has been accomplished in 3 yrs, it took much longer in Japan and Germany, and I prefer to be optimistic on the outcome.

The US and UK have learned simply supporting the regime of the day has not worked in the past


Did they really ??? I do not follow too closely Britain's foreign policies but in the case of the US, I have strong doubts about learning that...Establishing democracies is certainly not their primary goal, never has been, never will be. Helping regimes (democracies , dictatorships alike) that support US is their only goal...Helping resistance to regimes that do not support them is also in their policy, i.e. Chile when Allende won a democratic election....to name only this case. Many more could be listed...

You are comparing 1936 Germany to Iraq ???? The world was just coming out of the great depression ....A totally different context....We can hardly compare and the reason is quite simple. In 1936, there was clear evidence that Germany was building a strong army, building and stocking war weapons...
In the case of Iraq, it was totally the opposite. Iraq was under scrutiny for over 10 years by UN inspectors that did their job very effectively. That wasn't the case with Hitler...Iraq was also controled with a limited air zone. That wasn't the case with Germany either. The fact of the matter is that the world was mislead about the reasons to invade the country. I would have been the first one to support that war if we weren't mislead but Saddam was no treat to the world. he had no arms of mass destruction... He couldn't even aim his skuds right when throwing them in the neighbouring Israel... he was no treat to the world as we were lead to believe.....unlike Hitler's 1936 Germany...But don't read me wrong. Iraq is better off without Saddam and his tyranny but please, don't try to convince me that Saddam was a treat to the world like Hitler clearly was.

. The fact of the matter is that the world was mislead about the reasons to invade the country. I would have been the first one to support that war if we weren't mislead but Saddam was no treat to the world. he had no arms of mass destruction... He couldn't even aim his skuds right when throwing them in the neighbouring Israel... he was no treat to the world as we were lead to believe......

Remember what had happened, 911, the US Senate and the anthrax scares, Hussein had used WMD before on Iran and his own people, everyone thought he had the weapons and question was , would he share them with terrorists or not. Bush and Blair decided not to take that chance.
In 91 Hussein was aiming at Israel, he wanted Israel to attack hoping the Arab world one then come to his rescue. the scuds were inaccurate but the threat was real.
The intelligence failure was a huge problem, the CIA promised Bush a slam dunk that wmd would be found. (I guess if real life was a B movie, they would have flown them in right after the war , to be discovered and saved Bush and huge public relations fiasco);)
The Pentagon hugely misjudged the after war reality, they made a lot of mistakes.
But that is in the past, the future is trying to build a free democratic society in Iraq.
I hope they succeed.

The Iraq/Germany analogy was not that fair and I retrack that statement.

However it is getting obvious that Iran and Nazi Germany might be a better fit. Check out this article.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn11.html

Remember what had happened, 911, the US Senate and the anthrax scares, Hussein had used WMD before on Iran and his own people, everyone thought he had the weapons and question was , would he share them with terrorists or not. Bush and Blair decided not to take that chance.

Don't tell me that you are connecting Saddam to 9/11. Nor Saddam, nor Iraq had anything to do with it. That is exactly what Bush keeps on saying but the fact is that Iraq has nothing to do with that whatsoever...I find really sad that some people are still buying that arguement....In fact, all pirates were from a "friendly" US country, namely Saudi Arabia (not really a democracy at all), where Ben Laden is originally from also. Rather than concentrate on finding Ben Laden as Bush said he would (down to his caverns to bring him to justice) and track down ALQuaeda where it was, in Afghanistan, he turned his focus on Iraq and Saddam...As for Anthrax, no connection to Saddam or even AlQuaeda was ever done. In fact, it seems that it was from a domestic source...

Yes Saddam used WMD on his own people (and US didn't lift a single finder when he's done it despite the fact that they were the supplier of the chemicals used to do it) and Iran and who sold those weapons to him and for what reasons ??? Yeap, for the most part US of A...The name of the salesman was Donald Rumsfeld that claimed at the time that those were chemicals sold for agriculture purpose and even sold him military helicopters to spray the stuff in the fields....like he didn't know better...Remember that Iran was a US "enemy" at the time and still is today...and at that time, Iraq and Saddam was a "friendly country" serving US interest by slamming Iran and other reasons....You want to talk about world treat ??? Take a hard look at Iran and their new leader. He scares me to death and is more of a treat to the world that Saddam ever was....But what is really amazing is while they were helping Iraq with their war with Iran, Colonel North (remember him) was selling arms to Iran too to secretly finance the revolution terrorist in central america to pull out the socialist anti american governement there...

The intelligence failure was a huge problem, the CIA promised Bush a slam dunk that wmd would be found.

Was it really a mistake ??? When it was reveiled that the main document that the secret services of England used to justify the claims on WMD turned out to be a document they copied on the internet word to word along with the english mistakes done from a thesis of a student dating back in 1991, one has to wonder. When the claim that Saddam was buying uranium from an african country to build his nuclear weapons based on "official" documents from that country turned out to be forged and fakes, one has to wonder. I'm not so sure that this mistake was truly a mistake...

The Pentagon hugely misjudged the after war reality,
They sure did and yet, it was more than predictable. Just the fact that US let the chiites down after 1991 Desert Storm operations, just the fact that there are the sunnites, the chiites and the kurds there that don't truly get along together should have told them something....

But that is in the past, the future is trying to build a free democratic society in Iraq.
I hope they succeed.

I sure hope so too but based on the above, I'm not sure sure that we know enough of what goes on behind the scenes to be totally reassured about that.



However it is getting obvious that Iran and Nazi Germany might be a better fit.

Well, I didn't read the article yet but that is exactly what I am saying here....

I was just referring to the attitude in Washington changed dramatically after 911, stuff could no longer be ignored.
Bush never said Hussein had anything to do with 911, a lot of people thought he may have ties to AQ.

Facts are AlQueada are in Iraq now and if the US military was not in Iraq the terrorists would be in Afganistan killing maybe Canadian soldiers or blowing stuff up somewhere else. The extremist have to be handled somewhere.

Yes the US did support Iraq during the Iran war, but it was the only logical choice since the USSR was arming Iran and the cold war was still alive and well during that time.
The past 25 yrs the US supplies very little to Hussein less than 4% of their total military purchases for that period. Russia supplies the bulk to equipment to Iraq's modern army.

The 1991 Gulf War was a UN backed coalition they mandated the coalition forces to expell Hussein from Kuwait thats it, they had no authorization to go to Baghdad.
Bush Sr hoped that the Shites and Kurds was revolt and get rid of Hussein at the time but they had no authority to help them.
After Hussein starting slaughtering them it was Bush Sr. who went back to the UN to get the no fly zones mandated. The US and UK airforce had been protecting the civilians since that time.

Like I said a lot of mistakes have been made, I only hope the Iraqi people are able to get their country together for everyone's benefit.

I was just referring to the attitude in Washington changed dramatically after 911, stuff could no longer be ignored.
.............
Like I said a lot of mistakes have been made, I only hope the Iraqi people are able to get their country together for everyone's benefit.

I agree on most of your points and I never advocated that AQ should be ignored....but attacking Iraq in my view wasn't to combat AQ or world terrorism. The US lied about AMDs to justify that invasion because their citizens would not have approved if it was only to get rid of Saddam. They had to feel that it was for their own security, that there was something in for them....
As I see it, we both agree on the goal, we just differ opinion on the way to go about it. It sounds like when they had the meetings at the UN about that situation prior to the war....... :-) Terrorism is very difficult to combat as they have "dormant" cells all over the place, including western europe, US and Canada...Conventional war won't do the trick here.....The more inequities there will be in this world, the more imperialism and exploitation there will be, the more AQ will be able to recruit, the more there are seeds for terrorism...

My hopes are the very same as yours and it will take some time for that to happen and I'm trying to be optimistic as what is done is done, right or wrong...