A free press is now becoming obsolete in Iraq. Each day, countless torture victims and beheaded corpses are discovered on the streets. 7,000 civilians have died in the past two months alone, according to the U.N. There is a simple empirical question here. Are more innocent people being murdered and tortured in Iraq now than under Saddam? I don't want to get into all the policy and moral questions this raises. I'mjust interested in an empirical answer. I fear it's not a good one.