[MMMMMM]

Andy, I'm afraid I see little or nothing wrong with this. As the President bespoke, the U.S. military took tremendous pains to avoid collateral damage (and in fact did minimize collateral damage to an extent not seen before in any conflict of this magnitude). If Bush et al did not sit around speculating at length upon the number of potential Iraqi dead, it was probably because there was no need to, as it was clear that far fewer Iraqis would be killed than in the first Gulf War, and further yet clear that it would be far fewer than the number Saddam had slaughtered. So, why try to guess it further than that? Just the above was sufficient to compartmentalize the matter, and there was more pressing business to attend to, and it wasn't going to change the decision about going to war.

I think what is going on here is that the opponent(s) and detractor(s) are Monday-morning quarterbacking and trying to find anything to seize upon to make the administration look bad as regards the war. I think the answer "far fewer than in Gulf War 1" is sufficient for the question anyway. Also, the depth and ferocity of insurgency was not fully expected, and that has caused casualties to mount. If the insurgency had been less ferocious and had not been joined by foreign fighters, deaths on both sides would have been significantly fewer.

No point in Monday morning quarterbacking this one, in my opinion; and had they then known before the war that around 30,000 Iraqis would be killed they still would have proceeded. Nothing much would have changed had they guessed" Thirty thousand!" So all in all, rather than a matter of criminal negligence, I view this as a tempest in a teapot, and an after-the-fact attempt to make Bush look bad.

And yes we should have had more ground troops and been better prepared for an insurgency, and could have saved lives thereby; but that's not what Lehrer is drilling Bush about or trying to get at.