<div>Dick et. al.</div>
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<div>Since you are concerned with the killing of innocent women and children, which everyone is, of course, I have a question for you about this shameful loss. </div>
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<div>What do you think the impact of the loss of innocent civilian life in Iraq has on the war on terror? </div>
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<div><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-deathtoll25jun25,0,4970736.story?coll=la-home-headlines">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-deathtoll25jun25,0,4970736.story?coll=la-home-headlines
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<div>War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000</div>
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<div class="storysubhead">Higher than the U.S. estimate, the tally likely is undercounted. Proportionately, it is as if 570,000 Americans were slain in three years.</div>
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<div>Given that Iraq was not connected to Al Qaeda and 9/11, as the US 9/11 Commission concluded, and that Iraq had no WMDs when we invaded, coupled with the rather obvious and well known limited chances of entering the ethic and religious conflicts in Iraq and establishing a democratic government from scratch, was this invasion a wise approach to fighting the war on terror, with the massive loss of civilian life? Isn't this massive loss of civilian life inspiring Islamic terrorism on a global scale? Let's examine this basic question:
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<div>The US invasion so destabilized Iraq that Iraq has now become a training ground for Al Qaeda motivated terrorists, and is now more influenced by Iran, a virulently anti-US Islamic state which in the long run is probably the greatest threat from an extremist Islamic nation. Before with Saddam in power Iran's influence over Iraq was kept at bay. Bin Laden, it was well known, hated Saddam, who represented a corrupt and secularized form of Islam. Before the US invasion, Iraq's military capabilities were limited, having been devastated in Gulf War I, and were continually subjected to ongoing bombing raids by US war planes, while the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south were protected in the so called "no fly zones," also subject to overflights by US war planes. Saddam was a brutal dictator, we all know, but what has now replaced him in Iraq?
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<div>In Friday's August 11, 2006 Spokesman Review newspaper at the top of page A4, an article with the headline "Officials See Signs Of Al Qaeda In Bomb Plot," it is stated: "US intelligence officials now identify the war in Iraq as the single most effective recruiting tool for Islamic militants."
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<div>I find the death of innocent civilians horrifying no matter where it happens or who causes it. And I don't like ideological extremists of any kind who feel their ideology justifies the taking of innocent life, whether it is via a terrorist attack, or via the so called "collateral damage" of US military action, whether they be extremist Islamic terrorists, or Neocons supported by Christian Right Wing ideologues who hijack US foreign policy and manipulate the US population by use of lies and fear to justify invading a nation based on misguided assumptions about the wisdom of remaking the Middle East by the use of massive military force that will cause a large number of innocent civilian deaths.
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<div>Perhaps you can pause to stop oversimplifying the views of those who think the Iraq war was a big mistake, both in terms of the realistic chances of the invasion achieving its stated goals, and also for the impact the invasion has had on fighting the war on terror. Some serious and well informed thinkers involved with US anti-terror intelligence, who support an aggressive and forceful approach to the war on terror, who are not "liberal crackpots who still believe we can love them into liking us," as you so glibly phrased it, believe the invasion of Iraq weakened US efforts to stop terror attacks by Islamic extremists.
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<div>The loss of innocent civilian life in Iraq since the US invasion is horrific! I'll give this link again, for emphasis, because it seems those who supported the war in Iraq and/or continue to support it don't grasp the scale of the death in Iraq, most of them innocent civilians:
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<div><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-deathtoll25jun25,0,4970736.story?coll=la-home-headlines">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-deathtoll25jun25,0,4970736.story?coll=la-home-headlines
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<div class="storydeckhead">THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ</div>
<h1>War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000</h1>
<div class="storysubhead">Higher than the U.S. estimate, the tally likely is undercounted. Proportionately, it is as if 570,000 Americans were slain in three years.</div>
<div class="storybyline">By Louise Roug and Doug Smith, Times Staff Writers<br>June 25, 2006 </div>
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<div>And just as the Spokesman Review article implied, and should be obvious to even a casual observer, this loss of innocent life enrages Islamic people around the world, just as US citizens are enraged over our loss of life from 9/11, and motivates Islamic extremists to take up arms. This makes fighting the war on terror more difficult. This is part of the reason the CIA analyst who wrote "Imperial Hubris" called the invasion of Iraq by the USA a "Christmas gift to Bin Laden."
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<div>Can you see the logic behind this reasoning? I'm not expecting you to agree. I'm just wondering if you can understand.</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/03949394.asp">http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/03949394.asp</a></div>
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<div><em>He also published another anonymous book two years ago, Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America</em>, which analyzed the structure and motives of Al Qaeda. Anonymous is not squishy: both
<i>Hubris</i> and <i>Eyes </i>seem sufficiently apocalyptic to warm the heart of someone as anti-Islamic and bloodthirsty as, say, Ann Coulter. So if liberals seem ecstatic that yet another career national-security official is blasting the Bush administration for unnecessarily invading Iraq and bungling the so-called war on terror, they're also horrified by Anonymous's apparent advocacy (largely rhetorical, actually) of a military campaign that includes "killing in large numbers" and "a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure" as part of "relentless, brutal and blood-soaked defensive military action until we have annihilated the Islamists who threaten us."
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<div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett<br><br> </div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">It is time to wake up and taste the coffee, we are involved in a real war with real people who hate us real bad! These people will kill innocent women and children and dance with glee over their success. They will even kill all the liberal crackpots who still believe we can love them into liking us and that they are less a threat to our country than our own government.
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Dick S.</font></font></div>
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