There was an article in last week's WSJ stating that George Soros had helped with funding the Lancet study. One of his lackeys wrote a letter later that week insisting that so august a journal as The Lancet would never let itself be influenced by George Soros. She then went on to defend the study itself, implying that the study just had to be correct or pretty close, saying that the number of Iraqi dead was almost surely higher than the US Army's statistics show.
I guess Dan Rather contributed to the story.