Originally Posted by: DalronSo Iraqi civilians gets punished for what bin Laden did to NY? You still haven't said what the connection is between 9/11 and Iraq!

There is little-to-none (Saddam Hussein did to a degree support terrorism and harbor terrorists, though), nor does there need to be; Iraq's threat to the United States was totally separate from 9/11 and I dare you to find a single word in any of my previous posts that say otherwise.

Finally, bringing up Iraqi civillians in a debate such as this as a reason not to invade is a gigantic mistake: UN sanctions were killing Iraqi civilians at a rate of 45,000 - 48,000 PER MONTH (a key point of al Qaeda propoganda, by the way). That means that if you allow UNMOVIC two years to declare Iraq WMD free*, that means an approximate 17:1 ratio of lives saved to lost in favor of war. Even if you take the "Howard Zinn" approach and count Iraqi civilians and soldiers killed because of the war (approximately 100,000), the ratio is still 4:1 more lives saved than lost.


*Two years is probably an entirely too optomistic estimate: It took the US two years with THOUSANDS of inspectors able to inspect when and where they pleased while UNMOVIC had only around fifty and had to mask their movements from the Iraqi government and military.