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First of all, those links aren't working for me. The State Department has history of downplaying the crimes of allies and exaggerating those of enemies, so it's not really a trustworthy source. Neither is the thoroughly ideological Washington Times.
I've never heard of Genocide Watch. It could be a front group, or it could be genuine.
In any case, it's certainly true that the Hussein regime committed many atrocities. It killed hundreds of thousands of people. Its human rights record was awful.
There are a few thing worth noting, however. First of all, Saddam Hussein's rise to power was supported by the U.S. government. In fact, the CIA Hussein a list of leftists to kill. The United States continued to provide both material and political support to Hussein throughout the 1980s. The infamous massacre of the Kurds at Halabja was done with U.S.-supplied chemical weapons. After it happened, the Republican administration tried to blame the atrocity on Iran.
Hussein was only one of countless tyrants that the U.S. government in general, and the Republicans (especially those connected to the current administration) in particular, have supported. For example, from the time he came to power to the time he was deposed in the late 1990s, Paul Wolfowitz praised Suharto of Indonesia. Suharto always had an awful human rights record. He also killed hundreds of thousands -- probably more in actual numbers, and definitely more per capita, than Hussein.
It's also worth noting that Hussein's regime, brutal and wicked as it was, at least had some progressive aspects. Hussein took many lives; but he also saved many lives when he instituted the most comprehensive universal healthcare program ever seen in the Arab word. (That crumbled with the sanctions, of course.)
It's obvious, then, that the administration doesn't care about human rights or democracy. More to the point, it cannot be trusted to further the cause of human rights or democracy. There's nothing guaranteeing that the U.S. won't just put another tyrant in Hussein's place, or let Iraq fall into chaos as it has Afghanistan. In fact, as recently as 1998, Richard Perle was advocating turning Iraq back into a Hashemite monarchy.
Because they couldn't (and can't!) be trusted to institute real change, the important question to ask isn't whether the U.S. would kill more than Hussein ever did. After all, the U.S. must at least share responsibility for most of Hussein's atrocities (plus the 1.5 million people killed by sanctions). The important question to ask is: would an invasion kill more people than would have otherwise been killed?
According to the State Department, the Hussein regime committed over 1,000 extrajudicial executions per year. But let's be generous, and say 2,000.
The U.S. invasion killed around 50,000 civilians altogether. It also killed a countless number of soldiers, most of them conscripts. (We should count them too, since they were equally terrorized by the regime.) So let's say the U.S. killed 80,000. Saddam Hussein was around 66 at the time of the invasion. So let's use the average U.S. male life expectancy, and assume Hussein would live to 75.
75 - 66 = 9 years he had left to live.
9 X 2,000 = 18,000
80,000 - 18,000 = 62,000 excess deaths due to the U.S. invasion.
And of course, it could get much worse under the current occupation.
It's also worth noting that the invasion has inarguably increased the threat of terrorism, and has had the effect of encouraging states to acquire nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. This could ultimately have a much more damaging effect on the world than keeping Hussein in power would have.
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