IT’S ALMOST AS IF some people want Iraqi civilians to die. So eager are they to score political points that you can almost see them licking their chops as they desperately seek out any reports–however sketchy–of Iraqi casualties. For their political agenda, the only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi. I’m talking, of course, about the small but heavily publicized portion of the antiwar movement that predicts and counts civilian casualties.

First, the predictors: Medact, the British affiliate of the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, released a study last November predicting a total death toll of somewhere between 48,000 and 261,000, with up to 200,000 additional deaths from “indirect and longer-term adverse health effects of the war in Iraq.” Medact predicted that between 3,200 and 80,000 (when in doubt, go for a wide range!) of the initial deaths would be civilians, and presumably almost all of the later 200,000 would. (Medact also suggested that, in the event of an Iraqi chemical or biological attack, either the United States or Israel might nuke Baghdad, killing between 300,000 and 3.9 million, mostly civilians.)