Don Surber:

AP called fighting in the Sudan "the world's worst humanitarian crisis" after the U.N. estimated 200,000 people died violently since 2003 -- or twice the carnage of Iraq in the same time period. Sudan's population is estimated at 6.5 million; Iraq's is four times that....

Hussein's carnage averaged 70 to 125 civilian deaths every day for the 8,000 days he reigned. His 20,000 civilian deaths a year (on average) were considered "peace" while last year, under war, there were 14,298 civilians deaths.

Half of Sudan is nothing to boast about, but it's telling that the world is obsessed with Iraq, but has largely turned a blind eye to Sudan.

It doesn't appear these numbers include those who died as a result of the various wars Saddam instigated. Adding in only the Iran/Iraq war (with about 900,000 or more casualties) brings these numbers to about 50,000 civilians killed per year. (And there is reason to suspect the real numbers are higher still, based on comparative population growth against similar nations.)

My own estimate, which led to support for the war, was 50,000 - 70,000 violent deaths per year, due to Saddam's actions. (And countless more tortured in one way or another.) I could not envision any likely scenario exceeding that number on a continuing basis. I'm not wrong yet. I hope dearly I won't be soon, for Iraq's sake.

Last, these civilians are not being killed by US troops -- they're being killed, among others, by Iran's proxies, who target civilians. Our fault, if any, lies in not fighting such people more fiercely. So I find it stunning that these sad civilian deaths are only laid at Bush's feet, rather than being paritally or wholly attributed to Ahmednejad and his many enablers.

"Peace" is not an absence of involvement by the US military. There is no "peace" in North Korea, where a million or more have died over the last decade. There is no "peace" in Sudan. Dead people are dead people, and I endeavor, as a Christian, to treat them with the same importance regardless of political import. Sometimes, war saves far more lives than "peace" does.