655,000

I'm as confused as Steve Sailer. If someone told me that there were, as The Lancet claims, 655,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq since the invasion, deaths on top of the normal death rate of pre-invasion Iraq, I'd have no reason to doubt that. It seems plausible, what with all the power outages, bad water, lack of doctors, and whatnot. Where I'm confused is when the Lancet study claims that of these, 600,000 were violent deaths.

It's kind of like saying "6 million Jews died in World War II" as opposed to saying "6 million Jews were sent to the gas chambers." The first statement is believable; the second sounds ridiculous.

On the other hand, I don't find it all that surprising that a country that has suffered invasion, guerrilla warfare, and civil war for 3 1/2 years would lose 2.5% of its population.