I appreciate you posting this very important piece, but I still call ‘bull’ on it.
The earlier Lancet report gave a yearly total of approximately 220,000 war-related deaths a year from March 2003 to end of June 2006, based on a survey of 2000 homes. This new report gives a yearly total of approximately 35,000-75,000 deaths based on a survey of 9,000 homes. The higher figures in the new report are still nowhere near the approximately 15,000 deaths a year reported by Iraq Body Count, which is by no means a war-supporting forum, but whose methodology of using media reports is probably at least as valid as the methodology used by the Lancet and this new team.
I await a more conclusive report based on a larger and more comprehensive country-wide survey, once it is safe to conduct such a study. I suspect that the actual figure is between the IBC numbers and the low number for the second report.
Since the early days of the war, when there was actual combat between regular armies going on, a “bad” day will involve 30+ reported deaths, and a real bad day will report 60+ deaths. I also assume many deaths are not reported in the Western press. Based on this, I’d expect the deaths to average about 50-100 a day for five years, or about 90,000 - 180,000 total.
I think the Lancet study was BS - 220,000 a year is an entire major city, and news reports don’t support that kind of figure.
I would also estimate that the number of collateral deaths resulting from U.S. action is well under 10,000, a small fraction of the total deaths no matter how you figure it. I think the Lancet claim that most civilian deaths were caused by U.S. action is BS, even contradicted by MSM headlines. For the past three years, most reported deaths of civilians are caused by the insurgents and militias.