[Mazer]

Originally Posted by theknife

forcible regime change is flatly illegal under international law because it deprives a people of thier right to self-determination.

You can't take self determination away from a people that never had it in the first place.

and while i am not up on the specifics under US law and War Powers Act, i do know that if you have to defraud the Congress and the US people with false documentation to make a case for it, then that is illegal here as well.

I think I've made it clear that the American people didn't need to be defrauded to support the war. A lot of people were against it, sure, but not enough, or else it would never have taken place.

and while your world may feel like a safer place, the rest of the world is not: number of terror incidents tripled last year from 2003, making 2004 the most active year for terror attack since 1985.

It's a sign of the times, my friend.

and if you think these numbers are some kind of anomaly, bear in mind that the CIA has identified Iraq as having replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists. so rather than diminishing terror, we created a post-graduate course in terror with our occupation of Iraq that has spread to places like Egypt, London, Madrid, Iistanbul and others.

I havn't been carbombed today, and you know what, I'm not going to get blown up by a terrorist tomorrow either.

so here we are three years later and we are indeed left with three truths:
the war in Iraq was not necessary

Opinion, not fact.

it was not worth the cost because the world is not a safer place

It may be a scarier place (that's why we call them terrorists), but by and large the world is no more dangerous than it was before.

and it is not winnable. so no matter how good of an idea you think iraq invading may be, it is a failure by any military or political yardstick you'd care to use.

I happen to have a few choice yardsticks right here.
1. The US Army and Marines covered more ground during their invasion faster than any other invading force in history.
2. The civilian to soldier kill ratio is the lowest of any war.
3. It is statistically safer to be an American soldier in Iraq than to live in California, which has roughly the same geographic size and population.
4. Iraqi POWs (soldiers, not terror suspects) have been treated better than American POWs in every part of the world, and those prison guards who do mistreat prisoners are severely punished.
5. The people of Iraq have enjoyed more freedoms during three years of American occupation than any time in the previous two decades.
6. Politicians in Iraq are optimistic about their future and they're up to the challenge.
There are probably more, but it's late and I can't think of any more right now.

at this point, my question to any Iraq war supporter would be twofold:
1) exactly how many american lives is war in iraq worth? 5000? 10000?
5000? unlimited casualties? put a number on it

What's the point of giving an answer here? You'll reject any number greater than zero.

2) exactly how is victory defined? reduction of car bombs to x per day? 50% of the population employed? reduction of insurgent attacks to x per day? electricity in bagdhad to 15 houors per day? specifically, what does victory in iraq mean?

Victory will be achieved when the Iraqis are able to find their own answers to those questions, just like we're able to determine our own social and economic needs.

your leaders cannot define the cost because they are locked into the consequences of thier decisions and they can't define victory because they don't know what it looks like. that's why they can only speak in bumperstickers.

So they don't get re-elected. Even if the Republicans loose control of the federal government, that won't erase what has already been accomplished. Their fate may be sealed, but like it or not the political situation in the Middle East cannot be changed by elections on the other side of the Earth. Iraq is on its way to achieving self determination, and now that it's happened ask yourself, "Is this really such a bad thing after all?"

so there's the bottom line: whatever you thought of Saddam, the consequences and cost of invading Iraq far outweigh whatever the percieved benefits were supposed to be.

Even if one does outweigh the other, it doesn't cancel it out. We did some good over there, admit it.