Better for whom?

"We will leave Iraq a better place" claims a British general speaking in advance of the withdrawal of troops later this year. Well, maybe, maybe not - I would be more interested to hear what the man on the Basra omnibus has to say about it - but what is certainly true is that we will leave Iraq a far less populated place. Statistics are difficult to come by, because deliberately the powers that be don't keep them, or if they do, don't publish them, but a conservative estimate is that the thick end of 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion in 2003 (and that's the equivalent of the population of somewhere like Lichfield). Whether they, or those they left behind, would feel it was worth it is an open question.