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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (703145)	9/22/2005 1:03:31 PM
From: cirrus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

You could be right. There is no way to know. US military and coalition troops took over 2,100 dead to date and approximately 15,000 injured. Some estimates suggest that, due to advanced medical care and body armor and firepower, the death toll is a third of the 6,000 that it might have been otherwise. Injuries are more severe, but deaths are down. Military historians estimate civilian casualties in modern conflicts to be 10 times the number of military dead. Iraqi civilians and troops do not have such protection so a simple 6,000 X 10 = 60,000 Iraqi dead. If you figure 10,000 Iraqi troops died that brings the adjusted military death toll to 16,000. Multiply that by 10 and the number of civilian dead is 160,000. Cut it half because the air campaign was precise and the number is 80,000. No matter how you slice it it's still a lot. Not all deaths are caused by American munitions... the Iraqi army caused its share of collateral damage, and the insurgency is responsible for thousands - and they do it deliberately. Add in the number crippled and maimed... It wasn't supposed to be this way. American troops were supposed to be greeted as liberators, with rose petals. We were supposed to go in, topple Saddam, install a new government and start drawing down the troop levels. Instead we find ourselves fighting what is in essence a civil war... the exact reason Bush Sr. passed on occupying Iraq after Gulf War I. Somehow I don't think this is the state of affairs George Bush envisioned when he landed on the carrier under the "Mission Accomplished" banner. washingtonpost.com news.bbc.co.uk