Something I missed

The Lancet study which concluded that there were 650,000 more dead people than there should be in Iraq was an extremely low-cost affair. The numbers are uncertain, but it certainly cost less than $100,000. If someone wanted to truly dismiss this study, it should be a simple matter for the US government, or some right-wing think tank, to put together a more robust, better-funded study to eliminate the doubts inherent in this study and its conclusions. Hell, Joe Lieberman could (literally) fund a new study out of petty cash.

Alternately, official bodies could double their efforts to provide timely, accurate data. Except that (pretense of sovereignty notwithstanding) this is the Bush administration we're talking about:

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 19 -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office has instructed the country's health ministry to stop providing mortality figures to the United Nations, jeopardizing a key source of information on the number of civilian war dead in Iraq, according to a U.N. document.

Ah yes, we've seen this before: when the data are politically harmful, stop counting the data.