You state that scholars of civilian mortality rates cite death rates of 75 to 125 per day caused by the regime in Saddam’s Iraq, yet fail to mention one, or their methodology. Saddam ruled for over 8,000 days so we are talking about over 800,000 dead civilians. Yet the Anfal campaign (conducted 15 years before the invasion of Iraq) accounts for no more than 182,000 dead, also the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings resulted in 60,000 dead (how you come to the conclusion that all Shiites and Kurds who took up arms to overthrow their governments are “civilians’ you will have to explain). So that is 250,000 dead Iraqis from the two major instances of mass casualties in Iraq. This number has yet to be confirmed in the excavation of mass graves in Iraq as something on the order of less than 50,000 bodies have been uncovered. So I assume that you include in the total the number of Iraqis killed in the Iran/Iraq War and the Gulf War (regardless of who killed them and why), but Iraq cannot be held responsible for these deaths as Iran is as much to blame for the Iran/Iraq was as Saddam was, so it is patently false to say that all these deaths were regime sanctioned.

Secondly, Saddam’s Iraq post-1991 was clearly less violent than the current incarnation, in the run-up to the war. The study is looking at how many excessive deaths were caused by the war that would not have otherwise occurred, so it is pretty pointless to go back 15 years ago, when the level of violence was different. Also the inclusion of the media in Iraq does not meant that they will give an accurate accounting of the war dead. Reporters do not track down every single death, and in fact the Iraqi Health Ministry reports three times as many deaths from violence as the media does. Perhaps the Lancet report is a flawed piece of hackery that doesn’t deserve the light of day, but your shoddy scholarship refuting it is hardly any better.

Although this poll has a 41% “right direction,” that is hardly a majority, but the most telling story is the tracking of the issues…

They get worse. “Right direction” is so relative and half of them may support sectarian violence for all we know. The issues till the story as far as the mood of the people. How much blue/ green (better) increases compared to red/ orange (worse) increases over time. It is clear that the iraqis view the situation as getting worse for their everyday lives. The lone exception may be wages which has stayed the same.

…. not being told by the world’s press:The experts on how things are going in Iraq are not former State Department officials, former CIA officials who may never have set foot in the country. The experts are not Senators who…