And depending on who you ask, neither was Iraq a matter of national security, but I'm sure that's a point I will get little agreement on in these parts :)

I'm willing to believe the 10K number is an exaggeration, but even if it's off by 1/2 that's still 5K people. Anywhere else in the world this would be considered a humanitarian crisis. No, I don't think we're intentionally targeting civilians. What I react against is the mentality that because it happens "over there" to "those people" because of "national interests", it's excusable, unavoidable, and not as bad as it could be.

We should expect more from ourselves as a free people hoping to improve the world.

The situations aren't really comparable. What's happening in Sudan, Cuba, etc. isn't a matter of US national security.

I haven't seen any credible figures that US military action has killed 10,000 Iraqis. (I'm not willing to count people killed by people on the other side.) Regardless, we're not intentionally targetting innocents and, indeed, have taken extraordinary measures to avoid hitting them.

The "war on terror" (that is apparently only important enough to fight in Iraq) does not invalidate the value of an innocent human life. We saw 3,000 innocent human lives extinguihsed on 9/11 and after feeling that rage I wouldn't want to think what people in another country feel about ours when 10,000 or so of their innocent humans die.

How many people are dying in Sudan, Cuba, Palestine/Israel, North Korea? Are those lives less valuable than Iraqi lives? Why haven't we taken action there?

These are serious issues that all Americans should be thinking about and discussing. It's not a partisan thing, it's a human thing.

In counting the benefits gained from the 1000 lost, we should not ignore the 10s of 1000s of civilians who are still alive because of our methods of warfare.

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