However, although this is significant when assessed in the light of a very minor operation, the extra risk is very small in comparison to the higher overall risk of major surgery like a heart bypass.

BBC: Heart bypass - with local anaesthetic

The US president said that many doubts were expressed about the operation by those who knew about it, because of the greater perceived risks in comparison with other possible methods such as air strikes, but that he welcomed this openness.

BBC: Bin Laden raid: Barack Obama describes 'huge risks'

John Erickson makes something of the comparison between the great tsarist offensive in 1916 under Brusilov and Zhukov's operation in 1944 to clear the Germans from Belarus, showing in the process that the armies of both wars were not the primitive, poorly led, forces often depicted in western literature.

ECONOMIST: 20th-century history