I have tremendous respect for Tony Blair, after all the political beatdowns he's gone through in his own country, he can still say things like this about Iraq:

"There is only one side for sensible and decent people to be on in this conflict."

This cannot be said about our decision to actually go to war, or our decisions in how we are fighting the war, but to doubt that an end to the war with victory for the coalition would be the best result for the Iraqis is something I don't understand.

If anyone thinks the Iraqis were better off with Saddam Hussein, or that Iraqis will be better off now if we left them in a state of anarchy, they are letting their complaints about the management of the war overwhelm their hope for the future.

There was an interview in yesterday's NY times with a Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the subject of success. She says that "expectation of success is more important to securing it than talent, knowledge or self-confidence". With moveon.org ads featuring defeated American soldiers and columnists crying "Vietnam!" (just like crying "uncle!"), all they are doing is guaranteeing defeat.

And lest you forget how things were under Saddam Hussein, here's a tally:

Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power.

Of course this doesn't take into account imprisonment, torture, amputations, general withholding of basic rights, environmental disasters, etc.

Here is a good analysis of what damage has been done to the civilian population while at the same time suggesting that things may not be as bad in the whole of Iraq as is being made out in the press.