perspectives on the lancet death toll

the lancet recently published their figures for deaths caused by the invasion of iraq, causing some controversy.
some information on that here, here and here.


one other perspective caught my interest, over on d-squared digest;

Everyone knows that the standard unit of geography is "an area the size of Wales" (except for military purposes, where for some reason it is "an area the size of France"). Back in the dim days of history when the first Lancet survey came out, Marc Mulholland wrote something which got me to thinking that perhaps a similar standard unit for civil wars ought to be "the worst year in Northern Ireland".