“2nd it would completely ruin any credibility we have with people who like to fly planes into buildings. They hit us because they weren’t afraid of our response given our tendency to run every time we got smacked since reagan pulled out of lebanon and they’d know they got out of a tight spot and beat us. They’ve been decimated worldwide over the last 5 years and pulling out would absolutely hand them a victory out of defeat.”

You method to gain credibility is that when A hits us, we hit B, whom A hates, and cause lots of others to rally against us/for B/for A.

Wow.

The most conservative estimates of Iraqi losses that I’ve seen run to about 82,000 in the 5 years of the war. Those are only deaths that have been reported in the English language media. The source, Iraq Body Count, acknowledges that “it should be noted that many deaths will likely go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media.” Even so, they reported 26,000 Iraqi deaths from March of 06 to march of 07.

Less conservative estimates can run from “151,000 violent deaths out of 400,000 excess deaths due to the war” (Iraqi Health Ministry) to 601,027 violent deaths out of 654,965 excess deaths” (the Lancet) only up to June, 2006

But despite the fact that your statistics are at worst horribly biased, and at best not very supportive of your point, it’s a safe bet that American soldiers, on the U.S. government’s payroll, are not responsible for the murders you describe in Venezuela. We don’t have a dog in that fight. But our government’s decisions are responsible for what is happening in Iraq today.

The reason that the press doesn’t report daily on Venezuelan massacres is pretty simple- we are not directly responsible for it. We haven’t invaded that country and have nothing to do with the atrocities there. People get killed all over the world and there is no matter how many countries we invade and destroy, that will still happen.

The Americans dying in Iraq are those who volunteered to go there. (Has there been a single prosecution of an AWOL case in the last five years?) As far as Iraqis, they were getting killed in greater numbers before the war.

– Did you know that more people are killed by murder every year in Hugo Chavez’s glorious Utopian paradise Venezuela than are killed by war in Iraq? 18,000 were snuffed in 2007. Iraq and Venezuela are virtually identical in size and population. But you don’t hear about the horrific carnage in Venezuela on a daily basis, do you?

Why is that, you wonder?

It’s because everything you think you know is spoon-fed to you by the press, which controls the agenda by deciding what you’ll hear today (and, more importantly, what you won’t hear), and makes you salivate like a Pavlovian dog whenever it rings your bell.

Better them than the welfare leeches here.

– I’d rather the government piled up money into a paper pyramid and set it on fire rather than give it to those Great Society assholes.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. And sooner or later, some war is going to reflect the generally wild and off-base predictions of libertarian foreign policy “experts” (where did Roy Childs study IR before joining Cato’s foreign policy team?).

I was for the war back in ’03 (and remained so through about 2006). It seemed reasonable that Hussein was enough of a threat that he should be removed, and whatever weapons program he had dismantled. Some weren’t convinced by the evidence back then; I was. Too credulous? Sure, I guess. But I don’t lose sleep over it, because I don’t think it was unreasonable in 3/03.

I never believed in the nation-building part of the war, though. Disarmament and regime change was all I thought justified.

Of course, like most reasonable people, I realize at this point that the effort has not worked, and I think we should start packing up and getting the troops out of there as fast as is consistent with safety and prudence, etc.

Yes, the libertarians got it right. This time. Next time, who knows? But if they get it wrong (like the first Gulf War), you can be sure someone will be waiting to quote all the wrong predictions and show how libertarians really are unserious after all.

And can you really deny that some so-called libertarians really are “nutty” and “unserious”? Have you been to anti-state.com, or antiwar.com? Lew Rockwell ring a bell?

I feel like the dad that has just lost his shirt in a lawsuit because his stupid kid was in an at-fault car accident. No matter how mad I get, how loud I scream, or how much I wish I could go back in time and help him make a smarter decision, in the end, I’m still the dumbass who gave him the keys.

2nd- Our decision to invade Iraq let the terrorists know that we will respond to their threats and attacks with stupidity, and wind up with things like military commitments to Iraq, where we lose tons of money and soldiers. As a result of our invasion, many Iraqis hate us, and many are sympathetic with anyone that will fight them (AQ). The terrorists have not been “decimated”, they are still in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and control local police forces and militias in Iraq. Chaining ourselves to a flawed decision for prides sake is just hurting us more.

The question isn’t “Should we have…” but.. “What now”. Pulling out, like a lot of people want, would cause a major power vacuum that would very likely draw in all the neighbors. It may be hard for some of you to imagine but it would get incredibly worse than it is now.

2nd it would completely ruin any credibility we have with people who like to fly planes into buildings. They hit us because they weren’t afraid of our response given our tendency to run every time we got smacked since reagan pulled out of lebanon and they’d know they got out of a tight spot and beat us. They’ve been decimated worldwide over the last 5 years and pulling out would absolutely hand them a victory out of defeat.

I don’t care to hear about what went wrong, who failed to plan, who didn’t listen to whom, or who was right all along. What I do care to listen to is a plan on where we go from here. I want to know when and how to pull out and how to repair our diplomatic and policy blunders. I’m tired of living in the mistakes of the past.

The milk is already spilled, now let us find a way to clean it up.

http://www.scribemedia.org/2008/02/07/looting-the-iraqi-national-museum/