Huh?

I was reading the article I alluded to earlier, over at Total Information Awareness and saw a figure that caused me to do a little digging. The offending figure is here: Boldface type by me:

President Bush made frequent, and in my opinion (publius too) non-sequitur, references to 9/11 last night in the context of our operations in Iraq, but consider this: America, tragically, lost almost 3,000 people on 9/11. Iraq has lost well over 100,000. Is it fair to impose this kind of disproportional carnage on another nation - especially one unconnected to the events of 9/11 in the first place? Are Iraqi lives worth less, and this from the crowd that "respects" the Iraqi people?

I thought that figure looked a little high, and went over to the respected Iraq Body Count, who puts the figure somewhere between 22,000 and 26,000. I then went over to the BBC, who puts the figure somewhere between 14,000 and 37,000.

Then we go to Al-Jazeera, who puts the count at something over 37,000. A quick view of the Washington Post shows us that no really accurate count of Iraqi civilian deaths exists and estimates vary wildly, but most realistic estimates put the civilian toll at something under 37,000.

The 100,000 figure seems to have come from a study published in Lancet, a medical journal from the UK.

No one knows, okay? But most respected authorities put the figure about a third less than the Lancet article. While each death is a tragedy, there is no real reason to inflate the death toll.