The reports from Project on Defense Alternatives can be found here. Unless, of course, you want your information filtered through the BBC.

Expressed in terms of their mid-points, our estimates of Iraqi deaths are:

Total Iraqi fatalities: 12,950 plus or minus 2,150 (16.5 percent)

Iraqi noncombatant fatalities: 3,750 plus/minus 550 (15 percent)

Iraqi combatant fatalities: 9,200 plus/minus 1,600 (17.5 percent)

Notably, our estimates are framed in terms of "combatants and noncombatants," rather than in terms of "civilians and military personnel." This, because a significant number of civilians acted as combatants and some Iraqi military personnel fought and died out of uniform (and, thus, may have been mistaken for civilians). By some counts, between 5,000 and 7,000 of the Iraqis who died during the period of major combat operations were ostensibly "civilians." However, based on demographic analyses, we count a significant minority of these as likely combatants. All of those we count as noncombatants in the estimate above were civilian.

Note that the numbers given for civilian casualties (3,200-4,300) are considerably less than half the numbers that the antiwar groups and a few people here have been throwing around routinely. Do you think being off by a factor of two is going to bother them? Don't hold your breath.

When comparing Gulf War civilian casualties with Iraqi Freedom casualties, it might not hurt to remember that Gulf War One consisted of chasing Iraqi troops out of Kuwait and back to Iraq. It did not include taking over an entire country, including cities, towns, fields, farms, etc. The fact that the civilian casualties were even comparable is a miracle.

The fact that OIF cost as many or more noncombatant lives as did the 1991 Gulf War and the fact that the percentage of combatants killed did not markedly decline is best attributed to the specific objective for which the 2003 war was fought: regime change. This goal is far more ambitious strategically than the goals that defined Operation Desert Storm -- and it imposed more demanding and risky operational requirements on coalition forces.

Regime change required an engagement with Iraqi power that was more thorough and unrelenting than was the case in the first Gulf War. America's armed forces had to pursue Iraqi power to where it lived, flush it out, and then destroy, corral, or disperse it. This entailed more fighting in and around urban centers because these were also hubs of political power. Thus, regime change required that US armed forces get in among the Iraqi people to a greater extent than in 1991. Coalition forces had to close on key cities, gain control of vital assets and lines of communication, conduct repeated raids on centers of power throughout the country, and attrite or threaten the regime's military capabilities wherever they resided.

And do please remember the casualty numbers on both sides that the antiwar people predicted.