Dear Jeanne! How curious you made me! So I checked and found that there are grossly different numbers existing. One survey which covers the middle ground is the Lancet survey published on 11 October 2006, which estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war, or 2.5% of the population, through the end of June 2006. This study is allowing for a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths. 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95% confidence interval) were due to violence. 31% of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24% to others, and 46% unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56%), car bomb (13%), other explosion/ordnance (14%), air strike (13%), accident (2%), and unknown (2%). I have to mention that I copied the chapter above from Wikipedia!

By the way your comment a while ago was, in personal opinion, hitting the nail on the head: That eradication of poverty and low education can certainly terminate roots of terrorism as we have it today. But, terrorism existed before that too, I remember from my youth the RAF, the Baader - Meinhof group (they were quite educated) as the most dominant ones and of course the Munich Olympic game one! So, also polical and religious fanatism, oppresion of minorities, race dominance can stir unrest and be as much a cause for terror on others!

Let us just hope very much that none of the groups roaming the landscape in Indonesia for the moment are planning or being able to conduct some terror actions during the visit of President Obama.

I was actually after the bombing of the Marrriot last year every time a bit jumpy entering public buidings e.g. upscale shopping malls!

Have a good night!

Hasn't this topic been beaten to death in the movie 'A few good men'? 'You can't handle the truth!' and all that. Oh wait - that was just a movie.

In Bahasa Indonesia we have the idiom 'debat kusir' where the same old arguments fly back and forth without conclusion.

JG, is there no way of archiving threads so that commenters know the context of a long thread like this? If I had been on holiday and came back to the end of this argument/debate, I would have no idea how this thread developed. Also it seems rather weird that on an information portal, information is eventually disappearing from view. One last thing - it's worth bearing in mind that these forums exist to allow people to have an opinion and to have debates, but rudeness and point-scoring should be considered as offensive as swearing.

Roland,

Any ideas about how many Iraqis have been killed by other Iraqis and OBL affiliates? Just curious.

By the way, USSR was not too bad either on foreign aid. This is why the AK47 is so popular worldwide. The top marketing was selling snow plows and radiators to African countries. And I am sure England and France have similar business success stories.

Marko, my family had losses during WW2, some caused by A.H. and also some caused by allied troops!

What I want to say is that the U.S.A. is not the selfless defender of freedom and democracy as it likes to portrays itself but a lot of aid (especially military) is based on the thought that a political dominance, friendly to U.S. interests and other hidden agendas in other areas of the world is established.

And a lot of the troubles we are witnessing today in our World, Europe, Asia, Africa and the U.S. itself is caused by a foreign policy reaching back to the 70's and the Cold War, established by a conservative government unable, but probably just ignorant of the domino effect it will have to the future, the present we are now living in!

Giving you a few numbers of a polling, conducted by the British Ministry of Defense in Iraq:

Iraqis "strongly opposed to presence of coalition troops - 82%

Iraqis who believe Coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security - less than 1%

Iraqis who feel less secure because of the occupation - 67%

Iraqis who do not have confidence in multi-national forces - 72%

Iraqi Unemployment Rate - 27 to 60%, where curfew not in effect

Consumer Price Inflation in 2006 - 50%

Iraqi Children Suffering from Chronic Malnutrition - 28%

Spent & Approved War-Spending - About $900 billion of US taxpayers' funds.

Cheers, BTW that's the longest threat I've seen since a very long time! Lota of comments on the bottom already disappeared...