Here Goes Nothing ...

And Kosovo.

wasn't a rebuilding. it was a UN/NATO provisional government. not quite the same.

300,000 of his own civilians were killed during his reign and another 1M Iraqis and Iranians were killed when Saddam made a land grab during the Iran-Iraq War. It's pretty hard to beat those numbers.

1million hutus dead in ethnic genocide in riwanda while the world sat and watched and did nothing (with 2.5mill refugees). 400,000 in darfur. it's really not hard to beat those numbers. aids has killed more in africa (2million deaths alone in 2005).

the iran iraq war results in about 375k casualties on the iraq side and 500k on the iranian side.

1million hutus dead in ethnic genocide in riwanda while the world sat and watched and did nothing (with 2.5mill refugees). 400,000 in darfur. it's really not hard to beat those numbers. aids has killed more in africa (2million deaths alone in 2005).

the iran iraq war results in about 375k casualties on the iraq side and 500k on the iranian side.

No doubt the other conflicts in Rwanda and Darfur were or are bad. My only point was that it seems somewhat illogical to call for intervention in Rwanda, Somalia, or the Sudan based on a humanitarian crises and not think that Saddam's regime was worthy of ouster (considering between the Iran-Iraq war and killing his own people, some 1.1-1.3M died).

wasn't a rebuilding. it was a UN/NATO provisional government. not quite the same.

You're right, it wasn't a rebuilding, it was building a relatively autonomous government in Kosovo where none previously existed.

You're right, it wasn't a rebuilding, it was building a relatively autonomous government in Kosovo where none previously existed.

right, but japan, phillipines, and iraq involve new self governance AND infrastructe (water, power, road work, economy, etc).

i honestly think rummy has a lot of blame in this. by thinking he was smarter than everyone else (and while you could be smarter than a person individually, 1 vs 2000, the 1 person can't process the same amount of info or know enough about all the specifics needed to disregard everything they have to say).

it's not like its a big surprise that you have to win over the population by providing CONSTANT safety and talking to the locals... the pre-war planning had little contingency planning and doesn't seem like it was very well thought out ("of course they'll greet us as liberators", "of course we should destroy all the operational knowledge and trained military overnight", the limited thought behind who exactly was supposed to lead the new government once it was up and running, etc). which is what really makes me mad.

it almost seemed like rumsfield had a plan, and no matter what, he was sticking to it. I'm sure one of the big strategies is to adapt to your enemies tactics

No doubt the other conflicts in Rwanda and Darfur were or are bad. My only point was that it seems somewhat illogical to call for intervention in Rwanda, Somalia, or the Sudan based on a humanitarian crises and not think that Saddam's regime was worthy of ouster (considering between the Iran-Iraq war and killing his own people, some 1.1-1.3M died).


there's no doubt he's a bad guy, but there are lots of bad guys out there, and its convenient that we go after this one and do NOTHING about the others.

i mean, mugabe's still running around killing anyone that tries to oppose him. it's just that sub-saharan africa has some places that are in a real bad way too.

The planning was undoubtedly horrible and Bush will likely be judged accordingly. However, as pointed out, all that is water under the bridge. The issue of how to handle Iraq in the future is a distinct question.

the other thing is all our intelligence was geared towards russia, and we're still trying to get enough arabic speakers and cultural knowledge on the ground level to get the info that's needed to run full loads of intelligence ops.

i mean, if you speak arabic or go to an air force recruiter and say you want to be a linguist, they won't turn you down. It's a massive ramp up and there's still some institutional learning that's going on about the "new" enemy. that should help going forward, if nothing else.