collateral damage

in March of 2003, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld said during an interview with George Stephanopolous on ABC's This Week, said about the Iraq invasion:

"So it's not just that we win, it's also how we win. And if you think about it, the Iraqi people are in large measure hostages to that vicious regime. And we can do this, and we can do it, I hope and pray, with limited loss of innocent lives."

the los angeles times reported yesterday, however, that at the lowest possible estimate, 50,000 Iraqi citizens have lost their lives since the U.S. led invasion in March 2003. this number is almost certainly too low because of provinces like Al Anbar and the Kurdish territories that have reported or recorded no such data to Baghdad officials.

and, as the article also points out, 50,000 people in a country of only 29 million would here mean proportionally about 570,000 U.S. citizens, or a 9/11 disaster every 5 or 6 days since March 2003.

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