Perhaps it's just me, but the first few times I happened on Lew Rockwell's rants, I thought that he was Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party.

Why do I have the, oh, slightest suspicion, that one reason Lew Rockwell hates the neocons is that some of them are...well, you know about that world-wide conspiracy headed by Deputy Defense
Department Secretary Paul Wolfowitz...

And today, on the Lord's Day, all the neocons can do is rant in a rather masturbatory manner about what a historic day it is in Iraq when *gasp* 60% of the population gets to choose a leader from a ballot of reportedly over six freaking thousand candidates. Sheesh. Yeah, glad to see Saddam gone. Yeah, like it's really made a difference for Iraq. The only REAL difference it's made is that, if the study showing 100,00 Iraqi civilians dead by American hands since the beginning of the war is true, one's chances of being killed for minding one's own business have actually *increased* in Iraq since Saddam was toppled.

Some quibbles, Pieter: (i) I'm not certain, but I think that the Iraqis actually elected something more like a constitutional convention, and less like a "leader"; (ii) the Lancet study made no claims about whether any of the 'extra' Iraqi fatalities were killed "by American hands", and it's worth keeping in mind that with the large margin of error of that study the best you can reasonably claim is that some significant number more of Iraqis -- most likely somewhere between 20,000 and 180,000 -- died since the invasion than we otherwise could have expected had the invasion not taken place. But almost certainly most of those deaths were due to crime, terrorist activity, and insufficient food/medicine, and not direct American action; (iii) even if some caveats are in order about the election -- and surely some caveats are indeed in order -- it is a historic day, and we should all take pride in it.