Violent Deaths in Iraq Overestimated by Scholars, New Study Suggests

Interesting. How much does it matter, though, whether it's 151,000 or 600,000?

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

A new survey estimates that 151,000 violent deaths took place in Iraq between March 2003 and June 2006. The finding increases the controversy surrounding an earlier study that came up with a much higher death count for the years following the American-led invasion. That earlier study put the number at over 600,000.

The new research, described in a paper published online on Wednesday by The New England Journal of Medicine, was based on interviews with people in homes grouped in clusters throughout Iraq.

...

The earlier work used a similar sampling method, which has been generally accepted by researchers as a way to estimate the death toll in war-torn areas. But because the new WHO study had a larger sample size than the earlier research—which was done in 2004 and extended in 2006—it is more likely to approach the true number of deaths caused by violence, according to an essay published with the paper.

...

The authors of the new study ... conclude in their paper that, though their estimate is lower than that of the Hopkins work, "it nonetheless points to a massive death toll in the wake of the 2003 invasion­—and represents only one of the many health and human consequences of an ongoing humanitarian crisis."

One Innocent death is too many.

Don't write that off because you might assume Pro-Life is dead. There's a whole lot of people out there with a whole lot of personal investment (time & money) in Pro-Life; many, many of them will not write that off. And now they have to justify the value they've placed in it, so they are going to be vulnerable to this point: Pro-Life is based upon the principle that ONE innocent death is too many.