Iraq free?

One subject which I have not talked about in much detail on this blog is the Iraqi war. I have not in the past for two reasons. One is that this blog's main purpose is to spread the word about civil liberty issues something not effected by the Iraqi war, except for the torture cases which I did cover. The second was that almost everybody was covering it so I saw no need.

Well I am breaking my silence.

On a regular basis I will chat on Yahoo Chat in there political rooms to get a feel for peoples thoughts on current affairs, and because I really enjoy debating politics.

The last 2 or 3 times that I have gone on this one chatter has posted that Bush is a "True American Hero". When asked why he believes this he simply post:

Iraq=Free
Afghanistan=Free

This got me thinking, what is the definition of "FREE" and can we really describe Iraq or Afghanistan as free. Afghanistan I think can at least be labeled as close to free.

Iraq on the other hand, in my opinion, is far from free. Any country were and average of 20-30 people die daily in war violence, were women can not speak out freely, and were entire religious sects are fighting for control because they feel as if the other will oppress them is not free.

Yet we hear over and over again how Bush "freed" the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam. We hear over and over again about the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed over the course of Saddams 30 year reign. What we don't hear as much about are the 33 to 38 thousand Iraqi citizens, not military, citizens that have died in the last 4 years. That's about 8,000 a year so if you multiply that by 30 that would be 240,000 innocent people. Not that I am in favor of Saddam, but it doesn't seem that they have it much better right now. At the very least, they are far far from free.