Doug, unfortunately I can't recall the name of the person who made the statement, but it was on a radio talk show and the person was from the Brookings Institute (an admittedly conservative "think tank"). The liberal interviewer asked him about potential Iraqi civilian casualties, and after hedging a bit, he said that the maximum acceptable number of Iraqi civilian casualties the Pentagon expected was in the vicinity of 250,000. He used the word "acceptable." The reporter, (as I said, a liberal) had a hissy-fit and said, "You mean to say that killing a quarter of a million Iraqi civilians is an acceptable cost for liberating oppressed Iraqi citizens?" "No," was the answer, "I said two-hundred and fifty thousand! And that, we estimate, would be the maximum number of civilian casualties."

The discussion had droned on for quite a while, and since I was on overload from having heard several discussions of this type the same day, I was hardly paying attention. But what suddenly caught my notice was the apparent arithmetic disagreement over the meanings of "quarter of a million" and "two-hundred and fifty thousand." And then, the words "acceptable civilian casualties." I kinda had a hissy-fit of my own, since the main thrust of the discussion was supposed to be the humanitarian mission of freeing the Iraqi people from a tyrannical regime.

Sorry I don't have more information or a link to post. I did look up the Brookings Institute and came up with the following:

In regard to casualties, the experience of trying to forecast Desert Storm is chastening for those who believe that precise predictions are possible, but some general parameters can still be established. In particular, the United States could plausibly lose anywhere from about 100 soldiers, should the Iraqi military crumble or overthrow Saddam once American forces are perched on their border, to as many as 5,000 troops if the Republican Guard fights as hard and as effectively as its size and weaponry would plausibly allow within the urban settings of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. In other words, while such a war would not become a quagmire under even the worst of circumstances, it could be rather bloody. Moreover, Iraqi civilian casualties could be ten times as great as U.S. losses, generating strong opposition from international public opinion, particularly in the Arab street. This is yet one more reason to make any such war quick and decisive through the use of overwhelming force.

The whole article HERE. I ran a fairly exhaustive search with google, putting in a whole variety of terms, but other than obviously slanted websites both left and right, I couldn't find anything that I would consider reliable. Obviously, precise predictions are not possible, but it is revealing to know what is regarded as "acceptable."

Don Firth