The University of Chicago's Eric Posner writes: A conservative estimate is that more than 40,000 Iraqis survive per year today than during the sanctions regime, and probably most of them children.
The tight correlation between GDP and child mortality across countries bolsters this conclusion.
Let's suppose that the sanctions regime had continued for 10 years, from 2003 to 2013, and further that security flattens out-it doesn't get worse, but it doesn't get better. Under these assumptions, 400,000 Iraqi children would have died if the war had not occurred and the sanctions regime continued. Now, almost 100,000 Iraqis died during the war, and so one of the war's benefits is that it saves the lives of 300,000 Iraqis (over 10 years). ...
The 2003 war damaged it even more, but now the economy is recovering. GDP per capita (PPP) in 2002 was about $2400; today it is about $3600. Everyone hears about how bad electricity is in Iraq, but that is news from Baghdad. For the country as a whole, there is more electricity generation today than there was prewar (see the Brookings report).
