The latest study in the Lancet about Iraqi deaths is staggering: they calculate that 655,000 Iraqis have died since March 2003, about 500 per day since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Critics will quibble about the methodology used in the study. The authors themselves say that the range of deaths runs from 426,369 to 793,663. I'm willing to take the low-end. So more than 426,000 Iraqis have been killed by George W. Bush's war.

I can't resist pointing out that even Saddam Hussein's worst detractors estimate that 300,000 Iraqis died during his reign. I happen to believe that that number is wildly inflated, and certainly it isn't based on any sort of research. It's just a number promoted (before the invasion in 2003) to demonize Saddam. But even if it's true, George Bush has surpassed in three bloody years what took Saddam three decades in power to accumulate.

P.S. Here's a link to the .pdf version of the original Lancet story. It's technical, but read it.