Many of the people I spoke to said that they hoped there would not be any killings in revenge for all the blood spilled in this country during the last thirty years. As far as I'm aware, these settlings of scores have not yet begun, at least not in Baghdad. But I suspect they will come. In Kosovo, after NATO troops arrived in June 1999, many Serbs who had done absolutely nothing wrong, and enjoyed good relations with their Albanian neighbors, also thought everything would be okay; and for the first few weeks at least, they were right. But later, of course, they were wrong.

--Tim Judah, writing from Iraq in The New York Review of Books, April 30, 2003

Iraqis have begun tracking down and killing former members of the ruling Baath Party....

The killers appear to be working from lists looted from Iraq's bombed-out security service buildings, which kept records on informants and victims alike. But others are simply killing Baathist icons or irksome party officials identified with the Hussein government. The singer Daoud Qais, known for his odes to Hussein, was shot dead on Saturday. So was the president of the Iraqi Artists Union.

--Washington Post, May 20, 2003

I suppose we'll be told that things could be worse -- or that this is actually a good thing. After all, the Iraqis are "just" killing people associated with the old regime.

For now.