As Wolfgang observes, when professional researchers go out of their way to warn that "the data is of limited precision," they certainly don't mean to imply "like everything else." They mean they don't have much confidence in it themselves. This is especially true wen they talk about "limited precision" without giving an actual statistical "margin of error," which is usually only a few percentage points. (If a real "margin of error" was reported, the above accounts make no mention of it.)

Yers, I am still skeptical of the reported findings. The news accounts are at least at third hand (original source to named researchers to Ziegler to UN site or Washington Post to us). We do not yet know the the basis of the information (which could simply be unanalyzed or unsourced press reports from, say, Algerian TV), and it is still not clear why the reported phenomenon, even if true, should be occurring at all.

I see no adequate basis, therefore, for the bland statement that the Coalition presence in Iraq is causing children to starve.

By the way, it would be equally insupportable, on the basis of the little we know, to say that starvation in Iraq would be far worse without the availability of Coalition assistance.

But that *could* be the truth, for all we know.