Actually, based on the riots in Iraq last week and the fact that the country has something like 70% unemployment, uncertain supplies of clean water, etc, etc. it seems unlikely that Iraqis are better off with the US/British occupying force.
Continued bombings and "insurrections" even long after the capture of Saddam certainly suggests that large segments of the Iraqi population feel that they are worse off with the occupation.
This continued focus on the brutality of the Iraq government as a rationale for the invasion (now that the WMD issue has melted away) is getting a bit stretched, don't you think? Iraq is a pretty new entity (only been around in its present form since '68 - and in any form since post-WW2, I believe) - and most of the "atrocities" happened years ago. Virtually every nation on earth went through extremely violent stages in the formative years.
As to modern day management of internal affairs - you can slice and dice statistics all day long about the relative fairness and equality of how the citizens of any country (including the US and Iraq) are treated by their own governments.
But it doesn't take a statistician (just an accountant or two to add up the $ and an undertaker to count the bodies) to measure the way the governments of the US and Britain are treating the citizens of Iraq and Afganistan.
BTW - do you think the word "terrorist" could be exchanged for the word "communist" back in the McCarthy era? i.e. it has become a handy metaphor for anything that someone wishes to label as bad without a need to define, evidence or rationalize.
...I can't resist any longer:
Quote:
To even ATTEMPT to tie together accidental civilian casualties with the deliberate destruction of human life caused by the religous and political zealots that infest the world is disgusting.
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...do you see the possibility that that statement is hugely ironic (or absurd) in view of the US/Brit anhilation of Iraq? Or is your view of political zealotry flexible dependent upon who possesses it?