You seem to be going in circles on this issue, and that's just not like you at all.

I say there can be no cavalier pronouncements about inconsequential deaths and destruction caused by our activities, because no death or loss can ever be considered inconsequential, and you return with "the company line", that being that the UN supposedly did not agree with the drastic measures (actually "severe consequences", as corrected by gbaikie), but this cannot be so, for the UN Security Council signed the resolution, authorizing this same "severe consequences".

I say we are not taking him down because we put him up, and you come back with a very firm disagreement, because we did indeed put him up -- which has nothing to do with what I clearly stated:

Yes, we did set Hussein up, and this turned out to be a bad thing for Iraq, and the Middle East as a whole.

The reason we are there now is because Hussein refused to cooperate with UN sanctions and faced "drastic measures". We are not taking him down because we put him up. We're taking him down because he is an international criminal, and was a known threat to the security of the United States of America.

This, of course, opened a whole new can of faith-worms for you, because you simply refuse to believe any of it, and say so. Well, that's fine, but adds nothing one way or the other. It remains a fact that he was a threat to the U.S. It remains a fact that the only reason he could not make his threats real was because the U.S. was spending enormous sums to try to keep him contained within his extremely porous borders. It remains a fact that he was a supporter of international terror. It remains a fact that he was in constant search for the development of WMD. It remains a fact that WMD programs that could not be immediately implemented were placed in stasis for resurgence once the un-enforced U.N. sanctions were dropped, as they eventually would have been.

And now we have “Nobody wants casualties. Why do we do a happy dance and pat ourselves on the back that there are "so few"? These are not tokens on a Parcheesi board.” you press on with “the unseemly devaluation of what casualties there have been by implying that, because there are less than, say, World War II, this isn't worth counting yet”, and this simply is not the case, as I and others here have clearly stated.

Why does the word "only" have to appear in articles about casualties? Because we're so impressed with ourselves? Because we want to convince ourselves that it only "counts" once we get past a certain number, like point totals in a video game?

No -- and yes. It is because the analogy on war casualties must be leveled against previous and possible future conflicts. Our casualty rates are low, on both the U.S.-led Coalition Forces and civilian sides for the War on Terror, when measured against previous conflicts, and will hopefully be far smaller in our next -- for there surely will be others -- an/id everybody likes spreadsheet analyses.

We can prosecute a war and accept casualties without devaluing their loss by use of words like "only" and "merely". This ticks me off. In fact, it might be a tad more dignified to leave those words out entirely. Or would that rob the Administration's spin machine of a powerful softening agent?

It would be disinformation, as readers insist upon the “whole story”. Leaving only and merely to the researchers creates an arena where the fact is that we are taking a large number of casualties, when we clearly are not.

We have no right to the gratitude of the Iraqis. We have inflicted wounds upon them. Whether we get any gratitude is entirely up to them. To pout over ingratitude is pointless. To demand respect is counterproductive. To believe we know what public opinion is when the citizens could call our soldiers every nasty name in the book to their faces and they wouldn't know because they don' speaka da language is silly. Better to forget the ego issues and do the damn job.

Agreed. I must point out, however, that the major nasty-name callers in Iraq are within the Sunni Triangle and are generally Ba’athists, and victims of local Ba’athist terror.

Now, believing the reasons I presented (far above) for the removal of Hussein to be untrue changes nothing in the real world. Hussein & Co. were open advocates for the continuing use of WMD, upon their own people -- correction -- upon the lesser citizens of their own country, against all opposers of their regime, and against neighboring nations, including Kuwait, Israel and Turkey (all very large U.S. interests).

Dan