Enter Johann Hari with his Doubts and Dreams (via Harry's Place). Now I really don't see eye to eye with Johann in his general sense of things, but people like him illustrate the fact that the wisdom of pursuing Bush senior's unfinished business was manifest to anyone not bamboozled by the notion of actually doing something about the evildoers (remember Bush's much mocked language?) to protect, preserve and nurture the innocent. 'Oil' was, if you'll excuse the phrase, a smoke screen, because Saddam wouldn't have been the kind of dictator (note to BBC: DICTATOR) he was without his oil reserves to play with. Anyway, Hari, young (23), and idealistic (he's a socialist), saw the human angle along with a sizeable minority of the Left, and he still does. He might not like to be echoing (different figures, same analysis) the neo-conservative Steyn quite so closely, but as the cookie crumbles...

'The Human Rights Centre (HRC) in Kadhimiya has been set up by Iraqis themselves from the ashes of Baathism. They have been going methodically through the massive - and previously unexplored - archives left by the regime, which document every killing in cold bureaucracy-speak. The HRC have found that if the invasion had not happened, Saddam would have killed 70,000 people in the past year. Not sanctions: Saddam's tyranny alone.'