And in other news...

Iraq had a free and fair election. As John Rentoul puts it:

The significance of the "civilian surge" (David Miliband's phrase) that has followed the military one over the past year ought to be world-view-changing. What if Iraq does "come good"? It is not there yet, but the hopeful signs are now so overwhelming that a major adjustment is required. 

The lessening of the violence from the dark days of 2006-07 is now marked. Iraq Body Count's toll of violent deaths for January is 300. This is not great, but it is down from 500 in December and very different from the terrible peak rate of between 2,000 and 3,000 a month. Of course, too many people died in the invasion, and far too many died in the violence that followed (although, as I discussed here and here, nothing like the figures of "hundreds of thousands" or 600,000 or 1 million that are routinely and casually used by anti-war kneejerkers), but Iraqis really do have hope now of a stable, prosperous and free future.

Which they didn't before, and wouldn't if the invasion hadn't happened.