Quoting Extant Faora, reply 19And you're trying to tell us that the US isn't invading Iraq!!!
And AGAIN, invade implies to conquer / pillage a nation. Germany and Russia during WW2 "invaded" Poland. What the US did is nothing similar. Bush Senior sent troops to Iraq due to the fact that Iraq invaded Kuwait (Iraq planned on taking over Kuwait, hence invasion), with the purpose of liberating Kuwait. Obama extended the troop deployment in Iraq until 2010 (against Liberal wishes) and continues the troop surge (which Liberals said would fail, yet works). If you invade a country, you don't then leave voluntarily. So how are you against it? When Liberal Obama is for it... once again, hypocrites at work.
As much as it pains me to bolster Extant Faora, you are not using any standard definition of the term 'invade' here; From Wikipedia
An invasion is a military offensive consisting of all, or large parts of the armed forces of one geopolitical entity aggressively entering territory controlled by another such entity, generally with the objective of either conquering, liberating or re-establishing control or authority over a territory, altering the established government or gaining concessions from said government, or a combination thereof. An invasion can be the cause of a war, be used as a part of a larger strategy to end a war, or it can constitute an entire war in itself. Due to the large scale of the operations associated with invasions, they are usually strategic in planning and execution.
You may or may not agree with the rationale for the invasion (I do not - the rationales given were verifiably untrue at the time (If someone attempts to convince you to take an action with verifiably untrue arguments, then it is a reasonable assumption that in their judgement, if you were aware of the true facts, you would not agree to it. THe slow trickle of factual data over the last eight years has done nothing to undermine this axiom.), the costs were far too high for any conceivable returns, we already had a justified military action in Afghanistan which this would divert badly needed forces from. It was a bad idea, dishonestly proposed and incompetently executed by ideologues.) but the blunt fact is by any standard use of the English language attempting to say it was not an invasion because of our motives is like OJ trying to say his motives made breaking and entering not a crime.
Sloppy thinking of the highest order.
Moreover, despite Saddam's monstrosity, the deaths caused by the invasion are from 50-100 thousand verifiable deaths, with more accurate statistical models giving death tolls of between 500,000 and 1.5 million. These are the same statistical models that estimate over 600,000 deaths over the entire 30 year reign of an acknowledged bloodthirsty tyrant, so if they are overestimating the deaths we've caused, they are in all likelihood overestimating the deaths caused by Saddam by the same margin.
So in a relatively short time we have certainly averaged more deaths per year than Saddam had, and in likelihood caused somewhere between 80% to 250% of the deaths in mere 6 years as Saddam did during his entire thirty year reign of terror.
Even adding in the estimated upper limit of approximately one million casualties (both sides) from the Iran-Iraq conflict merely brings his thirty year death toll to 'parity' with what we have accomplished in merely seven.
Without mentioning of course - we funded that.Oh yeah that. To quote Molly Ivins (as best I remember) "Don't tell ME Saddam is a monster - I was saying that 20 years ago when your hero Ronald Reagan was sending him goddamn nerve gas."
With apologies, your blithe and dogmatic assertions of how much better Iraqi life is now, after our 'not-an-invasion', do not stand up to analysis - Jonnan
