"... how many would have been killed and still under the heel of Saddam if we hadn't gone in?"

Yes. Amnesty International was analysing the number of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It came out to a few hundred people a year. (In other words, the last 3+ years have involved about 3000 years of casualties at those rates.) The biggest 'non-natural' killer of Iraqis in the 1990s was the sanctions regime.

Quite possibly, yes - or at least their criticisms would be muted. One of the ways to think about the morality of a particular war is to think about the alternatives... for example, how many people would have died through state violence in Iraq if America had not invaded. The right does this all the time. The problem is, they base predictions of deaths due to state violence on the situation in Iraq in 1990, not that in 2003.

Let's say, for argument, everything had gone right after the invasion, and that the total excess deaths associated with the invasion were on the order of American military casualties today... let's say 3000. I think we'd find a lot of lefties recognising an argument that that many dead innocents (let's not mince words) would be justified in the removal from power of a thug like Saddam Hussein, especially since some hundreds of people were still dying in Iraq through state violence at the end of the 1990s.

But this study indicates _650,000_ dead - and perhaps more importantly, a death rates that's accelerating as the civil war that America started intensifies. You need a bloody big moral burden to justify 650,000 dead innocents, as we edge into the numbers associated with the Rwanda genocide.

America - and Americans - invaded Iraq in large part because many of you, and your government, thought that it would be easy and fun. The rest was lies and paranoia. Where's the moral weight in that?

and so I did. Thing is, I'm a guy. Does this mean I'm ovulating?

was exactly what I meant. A quick erasure of the Iraqi Army, as in Gulf War I (or II, depending how you count), CNN shows the drive through the streets with the Iraqis throwing flowers, then a whole bunch of Americans figured they could sit back and watch the smart bomb videos again. (There's quite a network involved in exchanging that stuff, y'know?)

Did every American expect and hope that it would be easy and fun? No, of course not... but enough did so that there was no serious domestic opposition to that little adventure. This invasion and occupation - and the hundreds of thousands of deaths that resulted - are a stain on _America_, the whole country... not just on the Republicans or right-wingers or conservatives adventurers who set the wheels in motion.

Yeah... that's why Canada spends about 65% per capita of what the USA spends on health care - and why Americans from Buffalo without health insurance sneak across the border for treatment.

"Women wearing veils were NOT "banned" from voting during the last Quebec provincial election last month. They were asked to show their faces along with a piece of ID like everyone else, over the obvious legal and safety concerns."

Well, no. The rules as originally stated were that women wearing veils _could_ vote, if they had proper ID or someone to vouch for them. This ruling by the chief electoral officer covered all such situations, not just Muslims.

When word of this got out, via a bunch of newspapers that make a specialty of Muslim-bashing, the reaction was extraordinary... all kinds of abuse, up to and including death threats against the electoral official involved. At which point, he caved, and said that Muslim women wearing veils couldn't vote.

This is called democracy in action.

Salon readers should note that these actions against Muslim girls on sporting teams are taking place against the backdrop of a provincial election in Québec that was notable for the degree of abuse directed by candidates from all parties against members of minority groups: the head of the PQ called a 'tapette' (basically 'a fag') who then goes on to prove his regular-guy credentials by calling Chinese people 'slanty-eyed', perorations on the machinations of Jews by an ADQ candidate, lots of abuse directed at Muslims, denial of the Rwanda genocide by another péquiste.

It was a pretty ugly election. In the 'Grand-Hérouxville' that is today's Québec, you can prove you're a real pur laine by bashing minorites.

Ummm, never mind.

in everything from helicopters and Twin Otters to 747s, I'll testify to the fact that you can get some really hellacious thunderstorms there. Certainly storms that I would not like to be taking off in, in any sort of plane.

this is the kind of story that you write when you've received a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis reporting to go to Ethiopia; you go to Ethiopia but are basically clueless about the place; so you fumble around for a while and then come back.

And then you write a non-story to justify the grant.

"Wadhams went to Ethiopia. He met some people who aren't like you and I. He reacted to them as people react in a strange land. He wrote about it. His perceptions did not align with your preconceived notions about what Ethiopia and Ethiopians are like."

Just to note... I had one of the first letters describing this as a piece of crap. I've been working in Africa since 1982, and the first time that I visited Ethiopia was 1983. I've been there a number of times since, as well as elsewhere on the continent - maybe 25 trips since then, the last time in January.

And this article is still a piece of crap.

"...it has been shown numerous times that the imams were hardly innocent..."

Well, no, that hasn't been shown at all. But it makes a good slogan for Islamophobes.