Ambit wonders why Iraq Body Count isn't counting backward:

Since the end of the war the UN's economic sanctions have been lifted and, from what I can tell, Iraqis are no longer dying from privation or any humanitarian crises arising from the war. And since Iraq is crawling with both international and domestic journalists as well as NGO types making assessments, I have little doubt that if Iraqis were continuing to die in such large numbers we'd have heard about it by now. You may recall that there were early reports of a small outbreak of cholera near Basra shortly after the war's end. That crisis in the making was nipped in the bud but the fact that the illnesses (not even deaths) were picked up by the media tells me that they are unlikely to have missed a humanitarian disaster on the scale of what reportedly occurred under Saddam's regime.

So if the UN's estimate was accurate - and if it wasn't where's the outcry that those who opposed the sanctions on humanitarian grounds were lying - and there is no evidence that Iraqis continue to die of privation, then, by my calculations, the war has already resulted in a net savings of over 15,000 Iraqi lives since the war's end using the war casualty figures compiled by Iraq Body Count. By rights the odometer-style counters should be running in reverse subtracting 5,000 Iraqi deaths per month.

I agree with this. The main reason is that the admission of being wrong is impossible for the pre-war quagmirists. They honestly can't admit that the thing they have put all their time & effort into was, quite definitely, wrong. (Via Glenn Reynolds)