I have refrained from writing about the stunning conclusions in the Lancet study which claims 100,000 excess deaths since the US/UK invasion of Iraq. Although extensively peer reviewed and done with accepted methodology for war conditions (I’d link to Spencer Ackerman’s Burnham interview, but his blog is currently experiencing some technical problems – read lenin’s excerpt), the number was so much higher than any other figures put forth – albeit with less reliable methods – that some caution seemed appropriate until more critiques were in. One critique that seemed, as lenin put it, damning, was Fred Kaplan’s in Slate. Fortunately for all of us who were so much less enterprising, lenin corresponded with the authors of the Lancet study and obtained a very convincing explanation.