Numbers

I am a pacifist personally, but I understand the need for government to provide security and have no problem (in theory) with war fought by volunteers. However, 2000 is a big number and not a particularly happy one at that. Now, depending on your perspective it could be argued that 30,000 - 100,000 (that would be the estimate of Iraqi deaths during the conflict - let's hope most of whom being of the nasty kind) is a bigger number, but it is still quite some way from 500,000.

500,000 is the number of estimated deaths of children (by 1996, just five years after Desert Storm) as a direct result of the UN sanctions imposed on Saddam's regime - to which Madeline Albright (a friggin' liberal, it's said) had the following profound comment on 60 Minutes: "I think that this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."

Not too long ago, in "A World Transformed" (1998) another Bush said the following: "To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability." - Maybe one Bush was right...

I never really felt personally threatened by Saddam (my understanding at the time of invasion was that even if he had WMDs, his rockets could not carry them much further than Israel), but I have no doubt that the world is a much better place with Saddam neutralized.

It doesn't make me a Dubya (I like to pronounce it DU-BAYA) or war supporter, but I should hope that "major combat" and whatever what followed is called have left a few more children surviving - or certainly given us hope that one day they will...

The number in this conflict that means the most to me is 1. One brother in-law, husband of Kiersten and father of Jack and that's good enough for me to say: "Support the troops, bring them home safe!"