Nice way of avoiding the argument and refusing to admit that your government has been lying to you. I'll take the bait and run with it. Going down your list...


The letter home astroturf charge: True. The letters were written by Lieutenant Colonel Dominic Caraccilo, not the soldiers who were asked to sign them. This means that the words were not the soldiers' own, which is the heart of the astroturf charge. Further, in the military, if your commanding officer "asks" you to do something, you damn well do it.

"The Iraqi people hate us foreign invaders!": Half-true. Some Iraqi people do, enough to form a small native resistance. Others don't care, others welcome the US presence.

"Massive US casualties in Iraq!": False, but I've never seen this claimed. There are casualties, but not enough to matter in the long run. Most doves point out casualties just to show that things are not going as smoothly as the US government claims.

"It's a quagmire!": Mostly false. Things are quagmirish enough to stall US exit, but not nearly as bad as Vietnam.

"America supported Saddam in the first place!": True, but a fallacy that doesn't help any anti-war arguments.

"We should have let the UN handle it": True, considering that there turned out to have been no unconventional weapons programs.

"It's all about the oil": Mostly true. Iraq's oil assets are a very strategic acquisition which support will weaken US and western dependence upon pro-terrorist and anti-West regimes. The US's neutrality in the face of active nuclear programs by terrorist-friendly Pakistan and North Korea shows that there was more than concern about WMD involved in Iraq.

Invading nuke-building North Korea or a more brutal dictatorship than Saddam's would have been a better use of US forces: True.

Rachel Corrie: Irrelevant.

Saving Private Lynch: Mostly true. The medical records came out: she was not shot or stabbed, and her wounds were consistent with a traffic accident. The region around the hospital was secured before the rescue, but the medical personnel say the soldiers barged in like it was a combat zone and harassed them.

The BBC's reporting was good: True. The Foreman debunking doesn't mention the words "British" or "BBC". The BBC's reporting was generally equal or superior to that of, say, Al Jazeera, Fox, or CNN. All news orgs had bad stories.

"We won with Clinton's military!" True. You can thank Clinton for the Predators and JDAMs, Reagan for the tanks and conventional aircraft, and Carter for the stealth aircraft. Each builds on top of the last.

Things were bad in Iraq immediately after the invasion: True, as in all invasions. Things got better more quickly in some areas than in others.

Things were better under Saddam pre-1991: True. Iraq was the most modernized country in the Middle East except for Israel until the '91 war and ensuing sanctions ruined the country.

Things were better under Saddam post-1991: False.

Saddam never killed anyone: False, but find me somebody who has made this claim. Otherwise, it's not a lie.

The museum looting: Mostly false. The last count I've seen (from July) is 13,000 items missing including 47 major exhibits, but nobody knows how much of that was prior to the invasion.

Bush lied about uranium shipments from Nigeria: True.

Iraq Body Count figures: False. Unofficial US sources had the count at 3,000 civilian dead and 8,000 military near the end of the invasion, which is a far cry from Herold's 7,000 civilian dead. The gap between minimum and maximum is far greater than would be expected in the confusion of war, and Oxblog's arguments against Herold are valid. Further, Herold counts street crime deaths in his count.

Bush lied about reasons for going to war: True.

Troop morale is poor: True, assuming that you consider a third of forces admitting poor or very poor morale, versus a quarter admitting good or very good , as poor morale.

The plans for the war were made beforehand: True. PNAC, signed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, others.

The US should be held to a higher standard than the UN: True, considering that the US claimed they knew where the weapons were and the UN found nothing only out of gross incompetence, and that the US has had unfettered access to Iraq's scientists.

Clinton shouldn't have bombed Iraq in 1998: Irrelevant.

The US and UK should not have supported Saddam in the 1980s: True.

The US fscked up in Iraq and Afghanistan: True or false depending upon the arguments. There are plenty of true arguments, Hanson chooses to deny a few false ones.

The US cannot conquer Iraq: False.

Iraqis will rise up against the US: Mostly false. There are some scattered instances of this occuring, but the larger part of the populace is docile.

My rebuttal to your strawmen: True.


So, out of 29 claims you attempt to debunk, only 9 are actually false and 2 are even irrelevant to the invasion. The other 18 false claims are actually true, although some are only true to degrees which may be debated.


Now, how about [link|http://www.harpers.org/online/revision_thing/|reading the article]?