wrote:
>
> > There was never a period of stability. It was always bad and it continues
> > to be bad. Look at the fatalities listed per month since the invasion 4
> > years ago. There are a few peak months, but the overall trend is not for a
> > major increase:
> >
>
> Strictly speaking, it you plot that data out and apply regression
> analysis, there is an significant upward trend.


Work that one out and get back to me. This is a war and people are getting
killed. All you need is a simple graph, like X Y line chart or bar graph.
Here is a link to a line chart that graphs US fatalities in Iraq from the
invasion to the present. While it jumps up and down, the highest peaks were
back in the spring and fall of 2004. There is no significant upward trend
that would indicate any more of a crisis now than there was in other
periods over the last 4 years.

http://icasualties.org/oif_a/CasualtyTrends.htm

> And on top of that,
> its a plot of US troop casualities which isn't an accurate measure of
> stability. There are two different phases of the war, there was
> initial invasion, and the current civil war. US Troops are not the
> primary target of this civil war, the ethnic militias are fighting
> each other and killing civilians. These numbers don't in anyway
> reflect the intensity of the conflict currently going on.

In that case, here is a link to a site that charts Iraqi civilian and
police casualties. Police deaths are showing a downward trend. Civilian
deaths are increasing, and that may be due to the insurgents getting better
at killing more people with more effective locations and times of
explosions.

http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx
>
> > Bush the Smarter and his administration had the good sense to realize that
> > it was in their best interests to leave Saddam in place in order to cancel
> > out the Iranian threat.
> >
>
> Perhaps radical to say over here, but I've been confused as to why we
> chose Sadam to take-out in the first place. He was a brutal dictator
> to be sure, but that hasn't stopped us before. He was secular and his
> motives easy to discern. He looks pretty good to me when compared
> with the religious zealot running Iran, the kind of man you can deal
> with.

The inconsistency of American foreign policy is a world of wonder. They
maintain an embargo on Cuba but flock to China. While they slag France and
Germany for allegedly supplying Saddam with supplies and technology for his
WMD programs (because France and Germany would not get onside for the
invasion) they overlook their past support of Saddam, which included
providing satellite intelligence on Iranian troop locations to "calibrate"
chemical attacks.


> I think a large factor in our inability to actual capture Bin Laden,
> is our concern for the stability of Pakistan and Musharaff's
> precarious hold on the country.


And we care about that why???? Pakistan was on the list of terrorist
supporting states. The only reason they aren't officially an enemy in
this conflict is because there was a deal to remove them from the list in
exchange for the Pakistan government taking an official stand, though their
actions speak differently.

> US forces storming in Pakistan and
> roughing people up would not go over well and would risk destabilizing
> yet another country in the region. That was the argument I was
> waiting for that Rush-Limbaugh-fan to make, but of course, he doesn't
> really have any understanding of the situation, he is simply armed
> with little bits of propaganda.

It was already unstable. There was some diplomatic footwork going on there
to present a semblance of stability. India and Pakistan were on the verge
of war, possibly a nuclear conflict.