Rubbing their noses in their own mess. posted by Richard Seymour

Here is a helpful reminder. Last year, Amnesty International declined to support the war on Iraq on account of what they considered the likely human cost. The following appeared on the front page of their magazine in March/April 2003:

"Iraq: The Human Cost Of War
50,000 civilian deaths?
500,000 civilians injured?
2,000,000 refugees and displaced people?
10,000,000 in need of humanitarian assistance?"

These and similar predictions were widely mocked at the time.

The Weekly Standard, in a brief, post-bellicus moment of euphoria, retorted that these and similar predictions had been "voodoo science" :

And on almost any street in Oxford, one can see the posters passed out by the British chapter of Amnesty International, entitled "Iraq: The Human Costs of War." The poster, which is careful to cover itself by using a lot of question marks, reads in part: "50,000 Civilian Deaths? 500,000 Civilians Injured?" Not quite, thank God.

The author of that article reserved most of his fire for Iraq Body Count , which he considered the worst of the bunch - he may now wish to eat his words and plant himself firmly in Marc Herold's lap, in the same way that many British commentators and politicians suddenly find themselves eagerly perusing and waving the statistics produced on the site.

Andrew Marr of the BBC was on similar form on the of the Saddam-statue-falling psyops:

"Well, I think this does one thing - it draws a line under what, before the war, had been a period of... well, a faint air of pointlessness, almost, was hanging over Downing Street. There were all these slightly tawdry arguments and scandals. That is now history. Mr Blair is well aware that all his critics out there in the party and beyond aren't going to thank him - because they're only human - for being right when they've been wrong. And he knows that there might be trouble ahead, as I said. But I think this is very, very important for him. It gives him a new freedom and a new self-confidence. He confronted many critics.

"I don't think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he's somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion, or focus groups, or opinion polls. He took all of those on. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result." (Marr, BBC 1, News At Ten, April 9, 2003)

Opportunities for a good nose-rubbing never cease to present themselves on that one, yet this is as good a time as any.

The Chicago Tribune also took the opportunity after the 'liberation' to mock "the ridiculous prewar casualty predictions". Martin Woollacott of The Guardian praised Medicin Sans Frontiere for refusing "to join other agencies in what turned out to be inflated predictions about the humanitarian consequences of combat, just as it had earlier refused to accept the huge figures which opponents of sanctions gave for infant deaths."

And so on. Will we ever hear of any of these wise-asses recant? Will Johann Hari ever provide us with a peek at those dodgy documents which allegedly prove that Saddam was planning on knocking off 70,000 Iraqis anyway, so the war 'saved lives'? Or, using his utilitarian logic, will he retract his support for the war? Answer: no.