That's funny. Joe and I posted the same thing at almost exactly the same time. . . .

Pictures like that make you wonder how many of the people in the crowd on that day three years ago are still alive today. And, according to all reports, those still alive would be living in a hellish Iraq of full of violence and death.

Yeah, something to be proud of. NOT.

When 'ken' writes "according to all reports", he means 'according to all reports I've bothered to read'. Anyone who thinks Iraq became a "hellish" land "full of violence and death" three years ago today doesn't have a clue. Of course, much of the continuing violence comes from the very same people who had already made Iraq a hellish land. They used to slaughter Iraqis while living in luxury and working out of air-conditioned offices, but now they lurk in (not very) safe-houses and spider-holes and slaughter Iraqis furtively instead of openly as they try to kill their way back to power. Although many of them are already dead or in jail, I'm impatient to see the rest taken care of. Is 'ken', or does he just want to bitch about Bush?

By the way, 'ken', by all accounts the rate of violent crime in South Africa has gone up hugely since Apartheid collapsed. Should we put the Afrikaners back in power, or do you think freedom is worth something even when it's chaotic and violent? This is an a fortiori argument: brutal as they were, the white South African government did not slaughter hundreds of thousands of oppressed subjects, as Saddam did. Yet most of us think its overthrow was an unambiguously good thing. The case for overthrowing Saddam was and is even better.

See, this is the interesting bit. Normal human beings with some level of compassion for their fellow man can look at something like this, and note what used to be, and be thankful, appreciative, what have you. It's pretty uncomplicated.

Then we have ken and his ilk. Based on his past posts here, it's possible that he simply sides with Saddam et. al. If so, the absence of rape rooms or tortured children might actually be something that depresses him. The other option is that his hatred has overcome what humanity he may have possessed, thus leading him to cheer for the reimposition of a regime like Saddam's.

Either way, it's pretty clarifying as we all ask ourselves what side we're on - and what side we WANT to be part of.

Well Joe, it is your side that has directly caused the total destruction of a county and the deaths of thousands of its innocent men women and children. And you are proud of that? You guys really are sick. You look at war as a game.

And while you sit in comfort and clap your hands at the toppling of a statue three years ago (like that really matters) the obvious question emerges: how many more people need to die for you to feel vindicated?

You really are sick.

Plus, the statue toppling was a staged event for the media.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

And my post wasn't even that optimistic. It's not like it was some cheery hyperbole just begging to be shot down.

He's so into sneer mode that he doesn't even read the whole thing.

It appears that henceforth this anniversary will also be the occasion for the filth with a nostalgia for tyrants to crawl out from under their rocks.

Let's just take a minute and remind ourselves exactly what it is that ken and Wizener miss so much, and what they are incapable of being happy about.

While we're at it, let's talk about the deaths of innocents Iraqis, too.

Joe, why don't you address the deaths of the innocent Iraqis you are responsible for?

One of the hallmarks of good charactor is able to own up to the consequences of ones choices. You chose war when it wasn't necessary are so are partially to blame for the innocents whose deaths resulted.

You keep trying to deflect blame from your actions by pointing the finger at someone else. You are only responsible for the choices you make.

None of those insurgent attacks would take place if you had not chosen to destroy a country and kill thousands of its people.

Like I said Joe, you are really one bad ass sicko.

The statue-toppling was a photo op manipulated by Army PSYOPS in a mostly-empty square. It was mostly for the consumption of the American public, and the editors of WoC are still drinking that Kool-Aid. The decision to pull the statue down was made, unlike those in Eastern Europe, by American forces.

Nobody here as managed to refute the well-established claim that Iraqis are dying from violence now at greater than ten times the rate they were in the last few years of the Saddam regime. The best, IIRC, that the pro-war crowd was able to offer was the hypothetical that had Saddam still been in power Iraqis would be dying faster, which is more of a game than an argument. (I could, for example, say that Saddam would surely have turned into the George Washington of Iraq with another week to think about it—an equally irrefutable proposition, but only in the sense of unfalsifiable, not sensible.)

But i thought there was no plan in Iraq once the tanks stopped rolling? Sounds like a pretty brilliant piece of psy-ops to me, if thats what it was. And why not? Is anyone really making the argument that the vast majority of Iraqis arent thrilled Saddam is gone? Doesnt this live up to the new noble media tradition of 'fake but true'?

You know, it was a great psy-ops gimmick, but let's not confuse it with reality, OK?

'ken':

I asked you a direct question in comment #3. How about answering it? By all accounts, the rates of murder, robbery, and rape in South Africa have tripled, quadrupled, or gone even higher than that since Apartheid collapsed. Do you think the white South African regime should have been left in power? It's a yes or no question. What's your answer?

Here's a hint: Freedom is worth a great deal, and living in a free country, even with a huge crime rate, is better than being a docile slave with a well-founded expectation of dying quietly in bed after a long and miserable life of slavery. (For Iraqi women, even if they were perfect slaves in every way, that included a chance of being raped by one of Saddam's sons.)

In any case, the current violence in Iraq will not last forever. At some point the dead-end Saddamites, Sunni supremacists, Islamist fanatics, and their foreign friends will either (1) win, (2) give up, or (3) all be dead or in prison. If (1) happens, they will go back to killing decent Iraqis by the hundreds of thousands, as they did with impunity for decades. If (2) or (3) or (more likely) a combination of the two happens, Iraq will have a chance to remain free and the murders and suicide-bombings will cease. That seems like a good idea to me. What's your alternative?

Andrew J. Lazarus:

The idea that Iraqis are "dying from violence now at greater than ten times the rate they were in the last few years of the Saddam regime" is hardly "well-founded". The only way you can come up with such a lopsided ratio is to systematically minimize the number of pre-liberation murders, maximize the number of post-liberation deaths, and count dead "insurgents" (terrorists) in the post-liberation totals, even though many of them are not Iraqis and none of them are innocent. When "insurgents" die, that's a good thing, as long as they don't take anyone with them via suicide bombs.

And the only way a ratio of post- to pre-liberation deaths that is > 1/1 can prove that the war was wrong is if you value freedom at zero. Do you think the American Revolution was wrong? It cost tens of thousands of lives, and saved none, since George III's regime wasn't murdering Americans, just oppressing them by taxing their tea and such.

Two simple questions for 'ken' :

1) Who is more evil, George W. Bush, or Saddam Hussein?

2) What is your plan for winning the War on Terror, if you think Iraq has nothing to do with it?

Here is an article on how to debate people like 'ken' and win in a very short time. Read the comments section in particular, to see many examples of just his type of people getting demolished

Dr Weevil, did you know that not a single American soldier killed a single South African when their abhorent aparthied regime was ended? Did you know that it was South African themselves that ended aparthied? Do you agree that it was the right thing to do for America to leave regime change in SA to the South African themselves?

Did you know that when Bush, with conservative complicity, lied to the American people about the threat from Iraq he had already made up his mind to destroy that country and kill thousands upon thousands of completely innocent people?

What do you think the American people should do now that we know we were deceived by Bush? Is it your opinion that all we should do is clap louder?

Ken (and Weezel) have their extremely narrow point of view, no facts and lots of name-calling, and will not be deterred by reading anything any one else says. Thank god, they're a minority and other than being extremely disgusting in having to deal with them -- or make the decision to just ignore them -- can't cause any harm.

I wonder if Ken (or Weezil) have their own blog, and if so, why they aren't there pontificating their views to an appreciative audience instead of having to drag their dismal and erroneous world-views to a successful blog in order to insure that there are actually eyeballs available to read what they have to spew.

GK, why does evil have to be ranked? Shouldn't we comdemn evil wherever we find it?

Only an idiot would fight a war against a tactic.

People who are international criminals should be treated as such. They should be arrested, prosecuted and brought to appropriate justice.

This however required utilization of the rule of law and international cooperation instead of the irrational beligerancy so prevelant with conservatives who infest this site.

ken,

Those are not answers. While no human being is 100% good or evil, saying who is more evil than another (particularly in this case) is easy.

Plus, Saddam HAS BEEN ARRESTED AND IS ON TRIAL, as you say. So you should agree with the war, no? Or do you think two cops could just show up at his front door and handcuff him?

So answer slightly different questions :

1) Which country in the world has done more good for humanity than the USA? Name a country?

2) Do you support or oppose the War in Afghanistan after 9/11? How about Clinton's military actions in Bosnia, Kosovo, or Somalia?

Answer these 2 questions.
2)

'ken',

So you are actually saying Bush is more evil than Saddam? OK, now we know where you are coming from.

Plus, you say we should 'condemn evil when we find it'. Well, you seem to have a problem condemning Saddam's rape rooms, use of Chemical Weapons against Kurds, or paying $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers?

It seems there are some types of evil you actually are in full support of.

GK, so you cannot answer my questions?

Isn't it true that all you are saying is that people should applaud the destruction of Iraq and all the thousands upon thousands of dead people are of no consequence at all?

I'll leave you to ponder my questions for a while as I have other things to attend to for the rest of the day.

But if you want to regain a shred of decency you will acknowledge your complicity in the horror show you guys have created in Iraq.

You being conservative, I don't expect I'll see any improvement in your charactor next time we chat, but I can always hope.

'ken',

I did answer your questions. You have not answered mine.

1) Which country in the world has done more good for humanity than the USA? Name a country?

2) Do you support or oppose the War in Afghanistan after 9/11? How about Clinton's military actions in Bosnia, Kosovo, or Somalia?

Answer these 2 questions.

Beating "ken" with a clue-stick is like trying to kill Rasputin with a cotton swab. Results are mixed at best.

'ken' has already lost the debate in utter humiliation when posed with simple questions.

Always debate a fanatical anti-American on principle, rather than facts, as facts are of no interest to them.

They will retreat in great haste when posed with questions about principle, as demonstrated above.

It is almost too easy.

Saddam Hussein is more evil than George W. Bush.

The statue is still a stunt that really meant noting to the history of post-war Iraq.

You haven't noticed the most significant image of all: the final one showing the football (soccer) kid with the red Manchester United shirt. That is a reminder of the reality of globalisation. It's not just global brands, but the technologies that make the global spread of information, ideas, things and people possible. It's technologies that are constantly improving and making the "global village" a practical reality for an ever-greater percentage of the world's population, rather than just a glib phrase for lazy journalists. It's the technologies that make it possible for there to be a global ideological struggle between democracy and Islamism, and which make it possible for there to be adherents of both sides in every country who can actively support their fellow believers world-wide. It is ultimately a reminder that any realistic foreign policy for a major world power, and especially the United States, must acknowledge this reality. That means acknowledging that we in the West and the Iraqis who want to live in a free, democratic society are allies in a global struggle, which none of us can avoid. The war is everywhere, so their struggle is our struggle, and internationalism is the true realism.

NahnCee:

Who is this 'Weezel' or 'Weezil' to whom you refer? If you're talking about me, it's spelled Weevil and I didn't spend five years in evil graduate school to be a mere Mr. Weevil. Of course, if you're truly wondering whether I have a website, all you have to is click on my name and see. And my name-calling ("doesn't have a clue", "just want[s] to bitch about Bush") is very mild compared to ken's ("You guys really are sick", "bad ass sicko", "Only an idiot would . . .") and for that matter yours ("extremely disgusting"). So perhaps you were talking about someone else. But if so, who?

'ken':

I never asserted that American troops died to liberate South Africa, though American sanctions helped. I asked a simple question: do you think that South Africa after the end of Apartheid (note spelling) is better off than before? And are you aware that the crime rate there has gone through the roof, that people are being murdered, robbed, and raped in huge numbers, much like Iraq, though without the suicide bombings? Do you really fail to see the point of my comparison?

Oops. I put my real name on the last post. Not that it's a big secret: anyone who does a WhoIs on the Dr. Weevil domain can get my address and telephone number, too. (I only use a pseudonym because I teach high school and prefer not discuss my political opinions with my students. It's a Google-deterrent.)

Andrew -

I love this one: "Nobody here as managed to refute the well-established claim that Iraqis are dying from violence now at greater than ten times the rate they were in the last few years of the Saddam regime."

Well, according to well-known Bush apologist Juan Cole, the most likely pattern of deaths is about the same

But you've got the weasel clause "in the last few years"...so you mean the years when we had 200,000 US troops sitting on his borders? When, according to all the same folks who are so appalled by the war, we were killing half a million babies with sanctions (BTW, what was your stance on those?).

So no, I don't feel compelled to address the "well-known" fact that more are dying today.

And as for my moral stance, I'll suggest this old post of mine at Armed Liberal

A.L.

1) I read several accounts of the statue pulldown, including the PSYOPS theory, and I got the impression it was a collaboration. Certainly the PSYOPS people recognized an opportunity, but numerous eyewitnesses confirmed the fervent joy of the Iraqis. You'll notice I did not present a triumphalist accounting of this event.

2) The best estimates of Iraqi dead of violence since the end of the war is a UN study that sampled a large number of households from all parts of the country. They estimate about 30,000. This includes death by individual criminal acts, suicide bomber deaths by their own device, their victims, and innocent victims of the Coalition lack of perfection. i.e all deaths by violence.

There is an emormous difference between deliberate torture and mass murder to cow a populace, enforced by a police state apparatus over decades, and uunavoidable collateral casualties when every effort is made to keep them to a minimum. Our armed forces have precision equipment and excellent training and techniques which enable them to reduce civilian casualties considerably, and they get better all the time. They are many times better than any army in the past, which killed huge numbers of civilians, but they are not perfect.

Part of my disdain for the antiwar arguments is that most of them severely misrepresent the situation, like these.

Armed, that Juan Cole column is ten months old. The rate of Iraqi casualties has accelerated since then, as part of Mission Accomplished.

Care to explain what "part of Mission Accomplished" means? I get the sneering connotations, I just don't see that the words have any coherent denotation in this context.

Andrew,

Has it occurred to you that those Iraqis are being killed by Al-Qaeda, and America is the one fighting Al-Qaeda?

Answer a simple question :

1) Do you also oppose the War in Afghanistan after 9/11? What about Clinton's wars in Kosovo and Somalia?

No, GK, most of those Iraqis are being killed by each other. And even if they were being killed by Al Qaeda, that would scarcely affect the uncomfortable fact that the rate of political homicide was (amazingly) much lower in the last Saddam years. For the record, I supported the Afghanistan war and cooperative NATO action in the former Yugoslavia. I'm not sure about Somalia, which was in any event more of an armed humanitarian mission than a war. Incidentally, the Somalia invasion began under George H. W. Bush, not Clinton.

Yehudit, my comment on the Iraqi death rate only partially related to collateral damage civilian casualties, which have diminished. I'm referring mainly to the various suicide bombings, death squad beheadings, and IEDs happening now.