Iraqi is safer then anytime in the last 20 years. Under Saddam over 1.7 million iraqi's were killed over 400,000 Iraqi's died in the Iran Iraq war, which he started.,We gassed over 100,000 of his own people. He killed 60,000 Shia's in the south, and over according to the UN over 1 million people died during the sanctions between the 1st and 2nd gulf war. They also didn't have lights or electricity in the Kurdish area's and the southern areas of Iraq were drained and the people were displaced.
The death toll of 150,00 iraqi's in 5 years is tragic, however it does not even remotely compare tothe level of death in Iraq before the invasion.
Further to the topic though there are two views of this conflict. Something that it went well. The other advantage of the Basra fight is that military and government was able tosee how would and wouldn't support them, and they promptly fire everyone that didn't fight or deserted there posts.This will make there military stronger.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/realclearpolitics/20080402/cm_rcp/getting_the_score_right_in_bas In the opening game of the baseball season between the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics in Japan, 11 runs were scored.
That lede would be unsatisfying to most sports fans, because it doesn't indicate which team won. But it is very like most of the reporting of battles in Iraq:
"The deadliest clashes were in Basra, where at least 47 people were killed and 223 wounded in the two days of fighting," wrote the AP's Kim Gamel in a dispatch March 26.
Ms. Gamel was writing about the opening clashes of Operation Knight's Charge, the effort by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to take control of Iraq's second most populous city from Iranian-backed militias, chiefly the Mahdi Army nominally headed by the Moqtada al Sadr.
Fighting subsided after Mr. al Sadr called for a cease fire Sunday.
The cease fire "is seen as a serious blow" to Mr. Maliki, because "he had vowed that he would see the Basra campaign through to a military victory," wrote Erica Goode and James Glanz of the New York Times Monday. But Nibras Kazimi, an Iraqi who is a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute, says his sources in Iraq tell him "the Mahdi army is losing very badly."
So who's right? It is rare in the annals of war for the side which is winning to seek a cease fire. And though Mr. al Sadr has said he wants one, Mr. Maliki hasn't said he'll grant one. "Security operations in Basra will continue," he said Monday.
"The Iraq army has cordoned off the city and is methodically advancing to allow residents to leave the city amidst the fighting, militants to turn over arms, while gradually isolating the factions they intend to uproot," a Marine liaison officer to the Iraqi security forces said in an email Tuesday to radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
Why might Mr. al Sadr have sought a cease fire? "Sources in Basra tell TIME that there has been a large scale retreat in the oil-rich port city because of low morale and because ammunition is low due to the closure of the Iranian border," TIME reported Sunday.
"They were running short of ammunition, food and water," a U.S. military officer told Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal. "In short, (the Mahdi army) had no ability to sustain the effort."
That sure doesn't sound like al Sadr's forces were winning. It is easier to maintain the illusion that they were when friendly, enemy and noncombatant casualties are lumped together.
His sources in the U.S. military tell him the Mahdi army was getting pounded, Bill Roggio said. "According to an unofficial tally... 571 Mahdi army fighters have been killed, 881 have been wounded, 490 have been captured, and 30 have surrendered over the course of seven days of fighting."
"The U.S. and Iraqi military never came close to inflicting casualties at such a high rate during the height of major combat operations against al Qaida in Iraq during the summer and fall of 2007," he said.
The Mahdi army has won by surviving, media analysts say. But it seems apparent the Mahdi army survived by quitting.
Mr. al Sadr offered the cease fire after travelled to Iran to meet with the head of the Qods (Jerusalem) force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the McClatchy Newspapers reported. The lawmakers urged Brigadier Gen. Qassem Suliemani to lean on Mr. al Sadr (who is in Iran) to offer the cease fire.
If true (Mr. Kazimi's government source in Baghdad described it as a "naive fabrication"), the McClatchy story indicates the Mahdi army is under Iranian control.
Why would Iran want the fighting to stop?
"The Iranians have realized that they no longer can use the Shiite militia threat to force Washington's hand on Iraq without jeopardizing their own interests," speculated STRATFOR, a private intelligence service.
Fighting among Shia factions, and the increasing independence of Shia factions they thought they controlled has virtually dashed hopes Iran would be able to dominate Iraq through Shia proxies, STRATFOR said.
"The mullahs know that they are losing," said Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute. "Their great dream of driving America out of Iraq, which seemed to be about to be fulfilled just a year and a half ago, has now turned into the nightmare of humiliation and defeat for the Islamic republic. The Maliki government is attacking the remnants of the Mahdi army in Basra, that same government the mullahs thought they had under control."
