[Schrodinger's Cat]

Let me add some clarification here, since few seemed to have bothered to read the original Lancet article. The study looked at the number of civilian deaths as a result of the war. The researchers wanted to compare civilian death rates pre-American invasion and post Saddam. Remember how a big bone of contention has been that Saddam was responsible for many deaths of his own people?

Here's just one example of the factors the researchers looked at: One of the major public health problems in Iraq has been the increase in infant mortality since the US invasion. The authors of the paper address this problem, explaining that increased infant mortality rate is due to the mothers' fear of going to the hospital since the outbreak of the war. This segment of the civilian death toll is NOT due to US soldiers gunning down infants. It IS due to the over-all instability of the country since the US invasion. The US stance has been that we are making life better for the average Iraqi. Going by the data published in the Lancet, we are not.

The Lancet paper was not some anti-American diatribe. It was scientific and impartial. It even made mention of US soldiers coming to the familes of the deceased and apologizing in some instances of inadvertant civilian deaths. The concluding paragraphs of the paper ask a very valid question. The US military claims that "collateral" deaths have been kept to a minimum due to precision weapons and bombing. If the US military has no knowledge of the actual number of civilian deaths, how can it make such a claim?