Iraq's death toll in historical perspective
[warning: the following is fairly macabre]
I'm trying to get my head round the death toll in Iraq. I don't know what the latest estimates are (some past ones are collected here, but it's clear that we're well over the 100,000 that the Lancet guessed back in October 2004. Compare that to this collection of 20th century death tolls , and you'll see Iraq is in the running as a serious catastrophe on historical scales. It's caused more than these wars and atrocities (e.g. the Boxer rebellion), and is comihng close to some of these (e.g. the Lebanese Civil War). Worse, it feels like we're only getting started.