You are not going to believe this!... I have double and triple checked, and I still come up with the same #S. I have to shake my head! I AM SHOCKED AND IN AWE! It's the five year anniversary of our Invasion and subsequent occupation of a country that we attached for one and only one reason. Operation Iraqi Liberation= OIL! Bush makes me sick every time he goes in front of a camera and all the world and tries to justify the blatant lies he used to drag us into a "Conflict" that now is just a quagmire by stating, Saddam was making weapons of mass destruction and consorting with Al-Qeda. Well, six years later there is not one shred of evidence of ether. Actually, Al-Qeda seems to have just been waiting for the US to over-throw Saddam to jump in and attempt to take a piece of the Iraqi pie. So, what did Bush do? He then broadens the scope by stating, "We removed a ruthless dictator who was a threat to the whole world and his own people". Yet, how much of a threat could Saddam and Iraq have been, if we were able to dethrone him and take over the entire country in less than one week? And done with only 5 casualties! Now, Hitler killed 6,000,000 million Jews by throwing them in furnaces alive. The war lasted 6 years and in the end over 400,000 American soldiers died. And a total of 60 million died on both sides during WWII! Now that was a threat! And as far as the human rights violations Saddam took out on his own people. Yes, They were atrocities, but 5,000 killed in the gassing of the Kurds, while the president of Sudan has orchestrated a genocide slaughtering over 400,000 and raping tens of thousands of women and young girls(some as young as 8 yrs old) and leaving 2.5 million refugees scrambling to get out of harms way. For them only to end up in Refugee camps with no food, water or shelter, in the middle of a desert! This took place during this same five years, and still continues today, yet WE DO NOTHING! ASK BUSH TO EXPLAIN, BECAUSE I FOR ONE JUST DON'T GET IT! We have spent over 600 billion dollars, much of it borrowed from China, and have only given, what would equate to LESS THAN 1% of that, to help end the horrors in Darfur!(www.savedarfur.com) Give me a break! Bush was also invited to this summers Olympics in Beijing, which he publicly excepted, to be the personal guest of a Chinese ruler that makes Saddam look like Gandi! WE HAVE ALLOWED AND STILL ALLOW IT! Now, for the frosting on the reality cake- 4,000 soldiers have died since the beginning of the war in Iraq(a senseless no. of good young men and women lost). BUT, Mortality rates in the US are at 816.5 per 100,000 per year. If you take 5 year times 816.5 you wind up with 4082.5 deaths per 100,000. (According to the natl center for health and statistics) OK now, we have over 150,000 troops serving in Iraq. Given the same numbers had they all not been deployed but instead remained in the country...........6134 of them would have died! DID YOU GET THAT! It appears that enlisting and serving in Iraq with all it's potential dangers is still safer than staying at home in America! Yes, I know other factors are not mentioned here like Age, gender, illnesses... but you get my point! Question everything! For, everything can be spun to make black look like white..Another little fact during the 5 yrs of "War". Back in America there were approx. 128,000 murders in that 5 yr period!(Natl center for crime statistics). Where is the war going on? JULY 28 2008 UPDATE- According to a recent RAND corp. study, 20% of all soldiers that have served in Iraq or Afganistan have developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorders. The mind blowing thing is that every year approx 6,500 soldiers who return take their own lives! THAT SIX THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED SUICIDES EVBERY YEAR! Over 25,000 since the war began! Now, add that to the picture above and ya just got to wonder..............