March 19 is the 4th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war. For a reminder of what this unconstitutional, counter-productive, immoral disaster has cost in the unnecessary and indefensible loss of human life, click here. For the cost in dollars, try here. For a timeline of all the insanity, click here.
This war was conceived in ignorance and deceit. It has alienated our allies, emboldened (to use one of Dick Cheney's favorite words) our enemies, slaughtered at least tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of innocent human beings, wasted our money, and diminished our Constitution. It was begun by men who had never seen combat, whose vision of the world was--and remains--a hallucinatory fantasy. The world is a much more dangerous and unstable place because of it; both Al Qaeda and Iran have been strengthened by this incompetently executed misadventure. We abandoned Afghanistan, where we had some justification for our presence, to a resurgent Taliban and sent our army to Iraq, where, notwithstanding the brutalities of Saddam, the Iraqi people are now measurably more miserable than they were before the US invasion and occupation. America is hated around the world because of the lunatic ineptitude of the neocons who continue to run our government. This war is the worst foreign-policy disaster in American history. We will be living (and dying) with its consequences for decades.
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Thank you for your comments, but I believe the higher estimate of fatalities should be our default, not a mere parenthetical. Speaking to Congress, Juan Cole explained why he thinks the Lancet's estimate of over 600,000 Iraqi war dead is credible:
"http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/kucinich-paul-congressional-hearing-on.html">.
You're right, of course, Anonymous. I meant to say (parenthetically [though parentheses might diminish the point]) the same thing.
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