> I don't think any person who took the position that the best outcome for
> the revo is that the US loses lotsa of troops actually wants to see Iraqis
> die. I just think they forgot that along with US troops deaths come Iraqi
> troop and civilian deaths.
The problem is, they were dying already from Clinton's vicious and despicable sanctions regime, for years and years and years. The only hope for the minimal-casualties scenario was instant regime collapse. Maybe in a parallel universe, it could've happened, and Iraqis could've mounted a Czech-style campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience against the rule of US troops. But the Euphrates ain't Bohemia, and now it's going to be a long, bloody slog of urban warfare. A few thousand Iraqis are still holding out in Basra; but Baghdad has literally hundreds of thousands of troops, dug in too close to civilians for saturation bombing.
As far as wanting the slaughter to end: we've got to stop not just this war, but the next five or six wars these evil insane fuckers are already planning. Iran and Syria are clearly next. Only the EU (with the backing of Russia, China, and most of the countries on this planet) has the might to halt this madness. Sand in the gears: the longer Baghdad holds out, the more the folly, futility and criminality of this war will become apparent, and the greater the likelihood that the EU will scramble the Evangelions.
-- DRR