What should we not take from this study?
The Lancet study does an excellent job in counting the dead, but its purpose does not lie in pointing fingers. While it points to 31 percent of deaths being caused by coalition forces, one could easily question whether those reporting the crimes might not be biased by anti-coalition sentiment and more likely to believe that a violent death was attributable to coalition forces. Of course, bias could go the other direction as well – we simply do not know. We also cannot assess who died – civilians or those involved with the armed conflict. Again, it would be easy to see how bias would affect reports by family members.

The methods used by this study are the only scientific methods we have for discovering death rates in war torn countries without the infrastructure to report all deaths through central means. Instead of dismissing over half a million dead people as a political ploy as did Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, we ought to embrace science as opening our eyes to a tragedy whose death scale has been vastly underestimated until now.

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