Soros Funded Lancet Study Claiming 650,000 Iraqi War Deaths

Remember that highly controversial study published in the journal Lancet in 2006 claiming that 650,000 Iraqi citizens have died since the start of the war in March 2003?

Well, according to an article published in England's Sunday Times, antiwar activist and MoveOn.org founder George Soros was partially responsible for the funding.

I'm sure this will be front-page, headline news for all of America's press outlets in the coming days, aren't you?

While you ponder, here are the facts according to the Times (emphasis added):

Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.

The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.

New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003.

"The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research," said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Darned straight!

Of course, I'm sure this will be the position taken by pressrooms across the country as this matter is given great focus in the next 24 hours.

On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't hold my breath, huh?