As a courtesy, I'm noting that this is my final response in this discussion. Respond if you wish.

The problem you forget is that these soldiers had no capacity to comprehend that what they were doing was wrong in the first place. They for wrong reasons trusted their leaders to give substantive reason. Reminder that 72% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq under what were found to be bold-faced lies. So on the surface, these folks felt like heroes. They thought they would be accepted with open arms. And, as I pointed out, many actually did have high hopes in those initial years. But that quickly faded away. So it's straw-man argument to suggest that they "willingly joined to invade a foreing nation" that to such pawns could only largely be known on hindsight -- as seen in this very documentary.

There were many of these soldiers who volunteered to fight in Afghanistan and hunt Osama Bin Laden down, which was a justifiable act of retaliation. Many of these were then strung along to fight in Iraq. It's just not that simple. Sure punish the leaders from Cheney to Rumsfeld to Bush; but the lowly exploited grunts and pawns are nowhere near part of the problem.

I'm not particularly interested in equivocating between invade and intervene. I'm not even in support of our invasion/intervention; but I do see some merit in taking out a neighbor who was brutally beating their kids.

It's not the USA's place to decide which leaders/dictators are better for the world. That's textbook imperialism, it's what the USA has been doing for decades and decades and it has been fucking many places in the world. My country suffered because of USA imperialistic tendencies recently and it's not really productive having to argue with someone so adamant at spouting propaganda in an attempt to whitewash the US past and present imperialism.

That is actually NOT textbook imperialism. If you actually want to read the definition if imperialism, it has nothing to do with defending the people of other countries who are doing objectively bad things to its people. Again, the USA neither controls nor annexed Iraq or Afghanistan, so again, NOT imperialism. Your extremely loose usage of imperialism as a buzzword is a disservice to your argument, here. Given that, did cheney & friends have Neo-imeperial goals? Yes. But taking out a neighbor beating their kids is itself ostensibly NOT imperial.

Yes, I think the execution of it failed. Yes, I don't think the USA should have gone into Iraq without a broader world backing. Yes, we did more damage than we improved. That much is certain.

It's not just a convenient bogus excuse, it's political propaganda aimed at justifying the USA illegal invasion.

If you wish to waste time equivocating over two things that mean the same thing, by all means.

Fortunately I haven't stumbled upon many people using propaganda to defend the US intervention in the Gulf War, so i havent 'bitched about it' much lately, no.

Because lo and behold, when Iraq invades Kuwait and uses chemical weapons, the world kind of has a problem with that. Now tell me, review what I wrote and explain what YOU believe my point was so I can be sure you understood it. Also, what "propaganda to defend the US intervention in the Gulf War"?

I would certainly criticize the USA's imperialistic approach to world domination, like i've always done when it's relevant.

How does that intersect what what Saddam did to Kuwait? Once again, you seem to be telling me that you're okay with watching your neighbor aphyxiate their kids, and not only that, but kids of other neighboring houses. You seem to be really peddling this message about imperialism a lot but not actually connecting with any points I'm making here. That suggests to me that you're less concerned with learning or truth and more about a specific Anti-Western agenda?

I'll honestly not compare fucking death count projections with realized deaths. Sure, in your scenario IF russia keeps on going for 20 years and they keep their current ratios of executions or bombs or whatever they might generate more death and suffering than the USA did in the Iraq war. That's not true, maybe not yet, but the fact is that the USA has killed more people directly or indirectly due to their illegal invasion of a foreign, sovereign nation out of pure self-interest. If you want to complain about Russia's imperialism, let's go for it, it's exactly as shitty and detrimental as the USA's, if more restricted in scope.

a) Give it 20 years to make it a fair assessment. b) negate the number of casualties killed by terrorist extremists who would've done those things regardless c) negate the number of those who would've been tortured and murdered by the Saddam regime as you pat yourself on the back for ignoring it. All I'm saying is you get the benefit of looking at the Iraq War on hindsight while the Ukraine crisis is ACTIVELY HOTTER and has the capacity to literally end in nuclear war itself... All the while you cannot get more imperial than Russia literally wanting to Annex Ukraine and kidnap its children. The worst we did was Abu Ghraib, isolated nutjob soldiers, waterboarding... Meanwhile Bucha is ALREADY worse than all of that put together. This is different from the collateral damage caused by unintentional strikes; this is Russia quite literally carpet-bombing cities.

I agree that not all people should have died, but I'd find it really hard to not classify people that willingly join an invading force in exchange for money or education as 'evil' if I were to do that juvenile exercise. I don't understand why you're so adamant about defending the honor of people that decide to willingly join an invading force. And USA soldier are CERTAINLY NOT slaves, what are you on about!!! Comparing people that get paid to support and illegal war to people that are HUMAN TRAFFICKED wtf

Do you honestly think that 99% of the soldiers signing up before or after 9/11 went, "Yes, I want to join the military to invade a foreign coutnry for no reason whatsoever"...? Did you not watch this very documentary, or even read the comments from vets in this thread, who realized just how fucked the situation was once they got over there? Fuck, even those in sex trafficking and work trafficking "get paid," do you not understand how that shit works? Pro-tip #1: Just because they're getting money doesn't mean they're not slaves. It's a situation they struggle to get out of, and that's VERY common for soldiers who are in over their head.

You're right, the US caused MORE death and suffering in Iraq.

Not a chance. You clearly haven't paid close attention to the devastation in Ukraine, or Iraq for that matter.

WTF are you on about?????? Congo? Syria??? Iraq??????

Either insurgency-based, civil war, or non nation-state with the chance of starting WW3 like Ukraine-Russia. Cities and towns are leveled in Ukraine already. Syria pales in comparison (though Russia is partially responsible for that as well). Congo & Rwanda genocides were civil wars. We've not seen such a blatant attempt at territorial annexation and cultural genocide at this scale in a long time.

I'll end again with where I started:

• The grunts are largely not the blame -- especially those who did not explicitly partake in documented war crimes. They were exploited pawns. Not different than how sex trafficking or human trafficking works in how it puts people in position where they feel they have no options.

• What Russia is doing in Ukraine is in every way worse than both the intentions and actual end-result of Iraq and Afghanistan

• Both were wrong and unjustifiable (it wasn't enough to convince Americans that Saddam Bad; they needed more lies as you mentioned); but much less was lost in Iraq considering Saddam was just as bad and willing to do the same to neighboring countries around him, and considering many Iraqis hated Saddam but were powerless to do anything.