PEBO Congratulates Maliki on Status of Forces Agreement Passage

Still, I would say the foundations of democracy there are pretty shaky.

This is a country that has been under a dictatorship, and colonial rule before that. They had deep sectarian rifts too.

Next time, we should never have the misconception that we can "transplant" a democracy.

Bush, I think, ought to be more open about acknowledging the over a million Iraqi civilians that are now dead because of his shoddy intelligence. Many are without water, and they had more cholera cases then the entire Asian continent in one year. It is also questionable about the use of private contractors- who only drove up the prices of the war and produced troublesome grey areas about "legal combatants".

Robert-The leftists from John Hopkins University had the death count at 655,000 in 2006. The figures are so wide ranging because neither the Pentagon or any facets of the US government wanted to quantify the deaths. The Iraq Body Count is the lowest count to cite. There was a British census taken from Iraqi families with 16% saying that they had lost one member of the family and 5% stating a loss of two. When that was extrapolated, the estimate was 1,466,063. The counts didn't factor the deaths resulting from infant mortality, the destruction of health services, and the lack of electricity.

Because of the suppression of death counts, they vary widely. The death of innocents was numerous. Particularly when you look at pre-invasion demographics of the majority of the population being under 18 due to sanctions and previous warfares. Funny how people get typecast towards the left when they show a concern and respect for human life. And let me make this clear, statistics from other forms of death do not justify the Iraqi civilian deaths, no more so than the pretext of bringing them democracy.

If accurate, 90000 deaths would be 15,000 a year....

..... Though the comparison is not valid that's much less than the death toll from drunk drivers on American roads

...15,000 to 25,000 civilian deaths would be a GOOD MONTH not year in Congo or Darfur

...15,000 to 25,000 civilian deaths from direct action by Saddam's henchmen might also have been a good MONTH not year during some of the more genocidal periods of his reign.

...an additional 10,000 a month would be on the low end of estimate of excess death due to starvation and lack of care when the UNITED NATIONS imposed sanctions during Saddam's reign, but this wasn't evenly felt, but deliberate genocidal intent by his regime.

...AND why did we have sanctions. WHY???!!. Because it was generally known that once they were lifted he would...

Yes, I'm going to say it, he had a proven propensity for WMD and use and his unstable but cruel rule dictated his use of weapons.

Thanks for immediate listing of the left's talking points of false information. UN, Iraqi and even reliable antiwar organizations such as the grimly titled IraqBodyCount Org (their estimate currently 89000-97000)

The collateral damage has been immense. Estimates put the loss of Iraqi life at close to a million.

And congratulations to Bush, and to General David Petraeus and our marvelous armed forces.

This is the final step of a true mission accomplished of returning control to a functioning democracy the terms of stationing our forces, a standard bit of contractual business in admittedly the quite different circumstances of dozens of other countries allied with us in the war on terror as well as previous NATO and Pacific treaties.

The 4 steps for review are 1) Establishment of Iraq provision goverment taking power from the CPA - June 2004 - i.e. formal end of "occupation / establishment of UN annual mandates to maintain forces, 2) Establishment of formal Iraqi government - 2a - constitution ratification, 2b - election of parliament and establishing PM and tripartite presidency, 3) devolving provincial military control to Iraqi forces, 4) today's Status of Forces agreement ratified

I believe 14 of 18 provinces have already returned to provincial control