Iraq War Update

I found this article from NPR fairly interesting. It lists a bunch of Bush's assertions from his recent address to the nation on the Iraq war, and then gives counter points to them. Clearly a biased piece, but their points do have a certain logic to them.

I've also heard a lot about protesting the war lately. I did my part for this effort before the war started. Back then it was clear to me what choices we should make, and we did not. At this point I no longer sure there are any good solutions to the problem. The best solution I can think of is a gradual pullout along with a large aide package for the war torn country we've created. Look at the Marshall Plan for an example of how aid programs can help. Oddly enough it seems the the world likes countries that give aid and dislike countries that give war. Admittedly giving out proper aid is not easy, in fact it's extremely difficult to distribute aid in an effective manner.

One often forgotten side effect of this war isn't the few thousand American troops that have died. It seem their causality count is being constantly updated. The often forgotten Iraqis people have suffered a tremendous amount. The best information I could find on how many Iraqis had died was by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad that had estimated that 650,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war as of October 2006. That's a huge number in a country of 27 million. The number wounded is certainly much higher and I suspect you'd be hard pressed to find many Iraqis citizens who haven't endured extreme hardships because of the invasion. It's too late to prevent these problems, but we owe help to them now. Any decision made by our government without considering these people would be a large scale injustice.