"...and in the process cost the lives of hundreds of thousands."

Proof, Ake? That's a BS figure plucked out of the air to impress those easily swayed by largely unsubtantiated opinion attempting to masquerade as fact. Around 100,000 died per yer in Iraq under Saddam during the duration of sanctions (the quoted figure, IIRC, was 1.2 million over 12 years), not as a direct result of sanctions, but as a direct result of Saddam's deliberate policy.

That's a fact (or as near as dammit). As far as my knowledge extends, the current death toll has not passed 100K, even including direct war casualties (i.e. uniformed & dead when the war was still officially on), & Western dead since (now numbering several thousand in its own right).

If the regime hadn't been toppled, there'd almost certainly be far more dead, far less freedom, & far more oppression. Of course, it'd have been far less well (i.e. virtually not) reported, Saddam's Sunni pets/powerbase would be much happier & the Islamic fanatics would find it much more difficult to operate in Iraq, but yeah, wouldn't the world be an oh so much better place...

LH - More BS. However much you or I (or anyone else) dislike the current policy, that does not qualify the grunts on the ground as terrorists. To suggest otherwise is fatuous. They're highly visible & relatively easy to target. An army of occupation, yes. Terrorists, no. More to the point, they may be making a pig's ear of the job (not their fault, blame the leadership again), but they're doing their best to protect the general populace & establish peaceful conditions. Items conspicuously absent from the usual definition of "terrorist activity", however much some might wish to misuse the term!