re: #278 ozbloke

Honestly, I don’t think people feel differently about a hundred thousand civilian Iraqi deaths or two hundred thousand civilian Iraqi deaths. Numbers that large are impossible to really come to grips with.

Another reason I feel that the number-hunting is a foolish past-time is that such data-gathering is always, under the best of circumstances, going to be difficult— and the middle of war is not the best of circumstances. There is no ‘real’ number to be attained. What matters a lot more to me is the actual tactics and strategies that we used, and whether or not they attempted to minimize civilian casualties.

I mean, the US government is allied with regimes that brutally torture, that execute people for free speech. I don’t need Wikileaks to tell me that the US government has blood on its hands, and that by extension, I do. I think Wikileaks could do a lot more good, and stay true to their mission, by publishing documents about what goes on in Saudi Arabia, or in other US allies that are so terrible on human rights.