... but who's counting?

Dubya's mouthing of a (lowball) body count ("30,000, more or less") for his private war the other night prompted his staffers to downplay the figure—as though it were too high.

It prompted Andrew Cockburn to revisit the issue of the counting of the dead and to bring up that huge elephant in the corner of the room—the fact that the Lancet study, by far the most reliable study to date, puts the number of "excess deaths" in Iraq since the U.S. invasion much much higher.

The Lancet study, released in Oct. 2004, still stands as the best and bravest attempt to get at the true human cost of this disgusting venture. See here for reasons.

When that study is mentioned at all, the 100,000 excess deaths it posits is cited as the highest conceivable tally. Even liberal Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson says 100,000 is "the most controversial estimate."

But that tally of 100,000 deaths was as of autumn 2004, and is skewed by the fact that the Lancet authors made a point, somewhat arbitrarily, of excluding Fallujah, the hottest of all hot spots from the counting.

Writes Cockburn: "Columbia professor Richard Garfield, one of the [Lancet] team members and study authors, told me this week that by now the number of 'excess deaths' in Iraq 'couldn't possibly be less than 150,000.' But, he added, 'there's no reason to be guessing. We ought to know better.'"