Voir Dire

… the United States and our allies have prevailed.

May 1, 2008 · 1 Comment

May 1, 2003:

Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.

Moreover,

In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred of years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation.

Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war; yet it is a great moral advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

Annual or Total Iraqi Civilian Deaths Estimates:

  • Iraq Body Count, 3/19/03-3/10/08: 81,874 - 89,353
  • Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 3/1/05-3/10/08: 40,662
  • Brookings Iraq Index, 3/03-2/08: 103,567
  • The Associated Press, 4/05-2/13/08: 31,245 dead; 35,436 wounded
  • The Iraq Family Health Study (the “WHO study”), 3/03-6/06: 151,000
  • The Lancet, “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq”, 3/19/03-7/31/06: 426,369 - 793,663
  • Categories: Andy · Policy · Presidency

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