Hello Ake! :)

No, none of my facts are scrubbed. The only one I gave was that Saddam averaged 100K deaths per year (common estimates) over the lifetime of the sanctions. And that IS a fact, insofar as any such statistic, given its size & nature, can be.

The guesstimates I've seen for current casualties (none for a while, I must confess) vary so wildly that my only reliable conclusion is that at either end of scale they are largely driven by an ideological agenda, & very little by substantiatable facts. My own feeling (non-evidential) is that real deaths (& this includes those attributable to bad infrastructure (e.g. lack of medical facilities) caused by the conflict as per the 'sanctions' estimates) must be around the 100K mark by now.

This is still only a fraction (OK, a large fraction) of the deaths that we might have expected to see under Saddam. But the Iraqis have largely had at least the illusion of hope over the last couple of years, rather than the certainty of awful oppression. I know which I'd prefer to live under.

As to "Teribusitis" (I'm sure he'll be flattered!), no, I never deal in faux facts, you should know that. Your opening statement was very close to pure opinion, & motivated more by emotion than by reason. That is why I take issue with it, as you know. I'm certainly not trying to beat you into submission. But what were you thinking about when you said "hundreds of thousands", eh? That clearly implies 250-300K dead minimum, & is well out on the wild end of estimates. Faux fact? ;-)

Lastly, my opinion of Blair is... not... repeatable... in polite (or even Mudcat!) company, but I wouldn't go so far as to claim ego influences his judgement. I've often said of Blair that the principal difference 'twixt him & Thatcher is that he actually is sincere. The trouble is, I can never work out which of the two is more dangerous... :-/