LA Times, 9/14/07:
BAGHDAD -- ...a new survey suggested that the civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1 million.
The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful. [...]
ORB said it drew its conclusion from responses to the question about those living under one roof: "How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003?"
Based on Iraq's estimated number of households -- 4,050,597 -- it said the 1.2 million figure was reasonable.
More on the flip...
This poll tracks the findings of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Iraq mortality study published in The Lancet Oct. 2006:
As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The deaths from all causes—violent and non-violent—are over and above the estimated 143,000 deaths per year that occurred from all causes prior to the March 2003 invasion.
The estimates were derived from a nationwide household survey of 1,849 households throughout Iraq conducted between May and July 2006. The results are consistent with the findings of an October 2004 study of Iraq mortality conducted by the Hopkins researchers. Also, the findings closely reflect the increased mortality trends reported by other organizations that utilized passive methods of counting mortality, such as counting bodies in morgues or deaths reported by the news media. The study is published in the October 14, 2006, edition of the peer-reviewed scientific journal, The Lancet.
Every Congress member and Presidential candidate should be questioned on what methodology they use to determine the human cost in Iraq. Sens. Obama and Brownback co-sponsored a bill on the DR Congo that included as a Congressional Finding of Fact a cluster sampling study on mortality in the Congo that was signed by President Bush. Bush called that same methodology, when applied to Iraq, "not credible". What number of dead Iraqis do you use in your decision making Senator Biden, Sen. Clinton? Sen. Dodd? Sen. Edwards? Sen. Obama? Rep. Kucinich? Gov. Richardson? Republicans? How do you come up with that number? If you don't find The Lancet study credible, why not?
Iraq is a humanatarian disaster on the scale of the Rwandan genocide. It wasn't before we invaded.
More on the Lancet study and the credibilty of the (as of 7/06) 655,000+ number here, here and here.
We focus on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, timelines, distinctions between getting combat troops out and all troops out but we don't focus on the number that history is going to focus on the most.
One million dead.