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"Is [the U.S. Agency for International Development] a good use of resources?" James Macinko, a health policy researcher at UCLA, asked in an NPR interview this month. "We found that the average taxpayer has contributed about 18 cents per day to USAID." That "small amount," Macinko estimated, had prevented "up to 90 million deaths around the world." Macinko was referring to a study he coauthored, which was published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. In addition to estimating that USAID programs had saved 90 million lives from 2001 to 2021, Macinko and his colleagues project that if the Trump...

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” - Winston Churchill In the course of a Boston Globe column today in which she calls for a referendum in Iraq as to whether the US stays or goes, Ellen Goodman writes:"Today we have nearly 3,000 American deaths, and by one estimate 650,000 Iraqi deaths."Ever the environmentalist, Goodman is dutifully recycling the findings of a report published in the Lancet magazine on civilian deaths in Iraq. This study, prepared by two anti-war partisans, has - as I noted here back in...

A study - released by its anti-war partisan authors just in time for the election - claiming that more than 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war has been debunked more times than Paris Hilton has been . . . well, let's just say the study has been debunked often and thoroughly, as noted here.But that doesn't prevent a member-in-good-standing of the MSM from shamelessly recyclying the phony numbers. Have a close look at this editorial cartoon from today's Boston Globe by house cartoonist Dan Wasserman. President Bush is shown declaring that, among other problems in...