This war isn't "about" freeing the people of Iraq. That's no secret. Similarly, World War II wasn't "about" the concentration camps, nor was the American Civil War "about" freeing the slaves in the American South. In all of these cases, the things I've mentioned were convenient hooks for propaganda by the leaders of the opposing nations, in order to bring the people into line. The real causes of these wars can be debated endlessly, and in all cases, both political and economic factors come into play.

But, the slaves were freed after the Civil War, and the concentration camps were ended. And no one's going to deny that these were incredibly good things, and that quite frankly, there was no other way that these things were going to happen; Hitler was not about to give up his camps, and the South wasn't about to make the radical changes needed to its economy in order to free the slaves.

Now, we have a similar situation in Iraq. There does, in fact, happen to be great suffering there. Twelve years of failed diplomacy has cost two million innocent lives; that seems adequate proof that Saddam will never stop this as long as he is in power, and it's no secret that he will not willingly leave. And it's well known that the people are not capable of rising up on their own. Now that the military's grip on the people has weakened we are starting to see uprisings in Basra and some other cities, but this could never have happened without the war undermining Saddam's power.

Is this war being fought for just reasons? Probably not; the true test will come when the war is over, but I have my doubts about the picture coming out all roses. But there are just reasons to fight. And if you ask the troops, I'd be more than willing to bet that this is the personal reason nearly all of them hold for fighting.

And yes, sometimes, accidents happen. This idea of fifty people killed in Baghdad seems odd; even the Iraqi government -who stands to gain the most from inflating the figures- has not claimed more than fifty civilian deaths total. My personal guess is that they are actually being pretty scrupulous about this; they've got a lot going for them in terms of international sympathy, and although they might garner more of this by grossly inflating the figures, it's too much of a risk, because if they're caught lying they'll very likely lose it all.

Think about this for a moment. Some two thousand bombs have been dropped on Baghdad alone, and yet no more than fifty people have died there. That means that even at the worst possible failure rate, 98% of the bombs dropped have not killed a single civilian, and even at this failure rate only one was killed per bomb that failed. The one-civilian-per-failed-bomb rate seems rather ludicrous to me, given the nature of bombs; more likely, it's three or four at least, putting the no-civilian kill rate of the bombs at over 99.5%. And that's if all fifty of these claimed deaths were in Baghdad.

A 99.5% success rate at avoiding civilian casualties is freaking astounding, particularly when it's taken into account that these bombs are being dropped into a city and not onto a battlefield. Even your average soldier with a gun has a worse rate than that under those circumstances, just through accidents alone. And yes, that's what these are: accidents. Which is rather what differentiates the Coalition from certain groups in the Iraqi military at this point.

One thing the US could do better, though, is let down on the arrogance concerning accidents a bit. Even if they were just to move to acknowledging and apologizing for accidents -see the Canadians killed in Afghanistan, where the US basically failed to even acknowledge that it really happened- that would be a vast improvement over their current policy.