You know what's fascinating

The U.N. Reported in excess of 34,000 deaths in Iraq. A finding substantially higher (nearly three times) than that of what passes for a government in Iraq.

Naturally, right-wing blogger Don Surber immediately uses this report to say:

I see where the UN said 34,452 civilians were killed and 36,685 were wounded in Iraq last year.

Well, that certainly is better than in the Congo, where the UN has had a mission since 1999. Civilian deaths there are 38,000 a month — 45% of them under 18. Also, our soldiers are not raping women and children, unlike UN personnel in the Congo.

But there is an elephant in the room when it comes to Surber's post.

Remember that Lancet report of an estimated 655,000 Iraq dead since the beginning of the war release in the Fall of 2006?

That report:

The investigators followed the same methodology in Iraq that has had been used in estimating death and disease in other conflicts such as Darfur and the Congo -- where the Bush administration uncritically accepted their results. The public health tool they employed -- cluster surveys -- has been demonstrated time and again to be the best method of estimating rates of death in areas where vital statistics are not scrupulously maintained. Such bureaucratic vigilance is not the case in present day Iraq.

That was the methodology Surber accepts for the Congo and his 38,000 a month figure. Yet no mention of it by Surber. Funny that.

Yet when the same methodology was used for Iraq several months ago it doesn't seem to get mentioned.

In fact, the Bush Administration has long accepted the general validity of such studies, both in the Congo and elsewhere.