By Kim Gamel
Associated Press /
BAGHDAD - In the evenings, women in black gather at Umm Fatin's house to remember the dead.
Each family in the four neighboring houses in Tahrir, a former Sunni insurgent stronghold in Baqubah, has lost loved ones to bombings or shootings. Yet these deaths and countless others have fallen under the radar of the Iraq war. Nobody keeps an accurate tally of Iraqis killed because nobody knows.
As the Iraq conflict approaches its sixth anniversary, the number of American troop deaths - more than 4,250 - has been meticulously logged by the US military. Yet analysts are no closer to knowing how many Iraqi civilians have been killed, and they acknowledge a credible death toll will probably never be recorded....
The 'justification' for the war into Iraq was never within the grasp of the President or Vice President. There was no actual threat to the USA by Iraq. It was disarmed and we were flying missions over that country to maintain that status of a leader with UN Resolutions to remove him to trial.
The problem with the former Veep's statement in his interview is that me makes no accounting of the hardship to the people of Iraq. There are estimates of over a million dead by reputable insitutions. There are known refugees of more than two million. Well over a third of the county was in poverty as recently as last year. The services to the people of Iraq are diminished and never achieved Pre-War status. There is every estimation the central authority of Iraq is not recognized by the people as a long term solution for their country and PM Maliki is attempting to use our military as his own private militia.
The reasons the USA have for the war and the continued occupation have nothing to do with the country's national security and we are "W"rong regardless of the fear of the current central authority to its end after we are withdrawn from Iraq. We had no reason to invade and we have no reason to stay, regardless of how Commanders 'on the ground' seem to be enjoying a preceived victory after a 'surge' that killed more Iraqis. I don't believe the justification for any military action is based in 'feel good feelings' for the military post Vietnam. There is STILL today no threat to the USA by Iraq. Our soliders are not the military to the Iraqi Central Government, its a sovereignty issue when soldiers are deployed for purposes other than national security.
...(Cheney) What happened in Iraq is we've eliminated that possibility. We got rid of one of the worst dictators in the 20th century. We got rid of his government. There is no prospect that Iraq is going to become a place where once again they produce weapons of mass destruction or support terrorists, as they...
KING: No prospect or a less likely prospect?
CHENEY: Well, I think as long as it's a democratically governed country, as long as they have got the security forces they do now and a relationship with the United States, I think there is no prospect that you're going to see the kind of behavior out of this new government in Iraq that we saw out of the old one over a period of 20 or 30 years.
So I think it was absolutely the right thing to do, and I think when history reviews this period, 10 or 20 years hence, that what will be significant was that we did, in fact, accomplish what we set out to do, and that the other things are interesting and important, but, you know, they are secondary to the basic -- basic result....
