Implication three:

Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq.

Of the 287 violent post-invasion deaths recorded by the Lancet authors where the age and sex was known, 235 (82%) were adult males between 15 and 59 years old. Extrapolating to the population as a whole would mean that around 470,000 men in this age group have been killed violently, i.e. one in 15 (7%) of adult males aged 15 to 59.

But that figure, horrific enough on its own, is only the national average. According to all accounts, including Lancet's, the intensity of violence differs widely across Iraq. The Lancet authors estimate at least a 5-fold difference in levels of violence between the lowest and the highest of the 16 Iraqi provinces sampled. In the provinces containing the highest violence — with a total population of 6.4 million — the Lancet-derived proportion of men killed would begin at one in 10, and rise from there (the study did not publish sufficient data to deduce what the maxima might be). This level of adult male decimation would not just apply to a few badly affected areas, but vast swathes of central Iraq representing around a quarter of the Iraq's population.