[mindslight]

Fog of war means there is no good count of casualties. Tens of thousands is my earnest order of magnitude based on rough estimations I've heard reading about various sites of atrocities. A good faith estimation is not a "lie". If anything, repeating an extremely conservative lower bound as if it were the full story is closer to being a lie (see also: the official USG Iraq body count versus unofficial ones).

The magnitude of the Iraq body count is horrendous, agreed. USG unilaterally deciding to attack Iraq is undeniably evil, agreed. If the US empire diminished, it would be a good thing - assuming it were due to underlying causes weakening the fundamental viability of large influence structures, and not simply different empires becoming more powerful.

But since we're talking about war, and not say cryptography bolstering personal liberty, then I'll begrudgingly accept the least-worst empire. And that is the role the US is playing in this situation, supporting Ukraine's self-defense against an aggressive totalitarianism-resurgent Russia. It does bother me to say that, knowing weapons manufacturers and other architects of USG's aggressive wars are making bank, and knowing the perverse incentive is for USG to string Ukraine along with just enough supplies to damage Russia but not make for a decisive end to the war. But I remember I am against Russia's imperialist attack on Ukraine for the same exact reasons I was against USG's imperialist attack on Iraq. The roles of the players have changed, so I must incorporate nuance to my views rather than leaning on the same old USG-bad heuristic.