BobHarris.com - 600,000 Iraqis probably killed after all

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Juan Cole

600,000 Iraqis probably killed after all

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Wednesday, 28 March 2007

Remember the study published last year that placed the excess violent Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion at over 600,000 (albeit with a large margin of error)? It was attacked and rejected and barked at and mooed at, of course, because, well, bad bad bad.

Now British government officials are saying that it was probably worth paying attention to after all:

The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.

[snip]

The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was disputed by some experts, and rejected by the US and British governments. But the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as "robust" and "close to best practice". Another official said it was "a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones".

So the real death toll may well be in the ballpark of ten times higher than the US government claims, and over fifty times higher than the US public generally guesses.