Lancet Revisited
By Read this exceptional post by Daniel Davies at Crooked Timber. Davies shows how most of the critiques of the Lancet study on Iraqi casualties can be systematically demolished, and that the “98000” is more likely an underestimate than an overestimate. To be fair, Davies points out that the estimate includes civilian, military, and insurgent deaths, which was not made clear in the initial article and press release.
Implications? Any humanitarian justification for the war is thrown irrecoverably into the garbage. We’ve slaughtered more by ousting Hussein than his regime would have killed in ten years. As a bonus, we’re $200 billion and 1155 young men and women poorer.
In the real world, people would be fired for this, or better, strung up. I don’t know what kind of world we live in now.