Saddam is estimated to have killed at least 1.5M of his own people since coming to power in 1979. An average of 62,500 dead Iraqi civilians per year, 1,202 per week.
The Three Weeks War appears to have cost the lives of a whopping 2,356 Iraqi civilians by the highest of estimates, as contrasted with the expected 3,606 who would have perished if we had left Saddam's regime alone.
And you're suddenly unhappy because you didn't see any of those 2,356 on TV over the last couple weeks. Well, tell you what... I don't recall seeing ANY of those 1,500,000 on TV. They were inconvenient -- inconvenient to Saddam, so they were inconvenient to French oil companies, so they were inconvenient to world politics.
They were convenient to US war plans, so they were inconvient to a generally left-oriented press. CNN admitted that they failed to report some really incredibly terrible things about the regime in order to maintain their status in Baghdad.
Well, I take it back -- we did see some of those 1,500,000 on TV last week. When they started finding the mass graves.
In light of all this, your concern for the "vital public interests" of Iraq is absolutely mind-boggling. 1,500,000 dead: not vital, I guess. Just a darn shame, apparently.
And as for the nuke materials, I find it hilarious -- REALLY! -- that you think such things were permissible and entirely safe from "looting" or winding up in the hands of terrorists while the country was under Saddam. If they weren't safe, the UN would have found them, right? The old story is that they don't exist and aren't cause for going to war; why don't you just stick with that story?
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