Friday, October 22, 2010

It's Déjà vu all over again

A Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths in Iraq
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ANDREW W. LEHREN
Published: October 22, 2010 in the NYT

Well big surprise. WikiLeaks has revealed another dirty little secret of the Iraq war. The civilian death toll is  considerably more than what has been reported in Iraq. Now they are saying 100,000 - 150,000. It will probably be closer to 500,000 when the truth is finally revealed.
Don't believe that?  Vietnam may be a good historical example. At the time civilian death wasn't reported as it isn't being reported in Iraq. At the time estimates from our government put civilian deaths in South Vietnam at around 200,000. They didn't report on North Vietnam casualties. We now know that approximately 2 million civilians died in the south and another 2 million in the north. 4 million innocent civilian lives - babies, children, women, old men - died as a result of our asinine foreign policy. And to what end? We lost, and Vietnam prospers. Oops.
Why do we learn so little from past mistakes?

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