But the most telling point is that when asked: "if the Prime Minister was concerned about a survey published today suggesting that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the war in Iraq" his concerns were with the methodology of the survey, rather than the deaths of the civilians.

This is a shame, particularly in light of the forthcoming attack on Fallujah, given that the survey’s conclusion is that it "should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes". I’m not holding out any hope that those changes are going to happen.

This is accurate but misleading, since it is intended to call into question the figures estimated by Les Roberts et al. The paper — which you can read on the Lancet’s site, at
<a href="http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf">http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf</a>
describes the full study. The researchers used a standard methodology which yields estimates with confidence ranges; the 100,000 deaths is correctly described as a conservative estimate. The authors excluded data from Fallujah from that figure because of difficulties collecting data in that area; if their estimates for Fallujah are included, the total rises to c. 300,000, though with wide confidence bounds.

"Consequently, we did not believe that extrapolation was an appropriate technique to use."

This is nonsense, and a shameful thing for the PMOS to say. Cluster sampling of this type is a standard technique (and one which is used by much of the government’s own research); the study considered 33 separate locations throughout Iraq, not concentrating on "areas such as Fallujah" as the PMOS implies, and — in the absence of a more detailed study — should be considered the best available information yet available on the casualties of the war.

If Downing Street wants a more accurate figure, let’s see some funding for a bigger study. Up until then, "put up or shut up".

There’s a wider point here, which is that the Allied forces in Iraq have explicitly refused to provide estimates of the numbers of casualties caused by the war. For the British government then to stand up and try — on completely spurious grounds — to rubbish the work of those who are doing so is absolutely disgraceful.

"Our worries centred on the fact that the technique in question appeared to treat Iraq as if every area was one and the same."

Interesting that no worry is expressed over the possibility that Blair’s war has cost 100,000 Iraqi civilians their lives.

If Blair genuinely gave a damn about Iraqi corpses they’d have actually done a "detailed body count", or, at the very least, contacted the academics who produced the report and got clarification over their bogus quibbles about methodology. But he doesn’t give a damn.

Blair and his gang should be sitting in a cell next to Saddam Hussein, for crimes committed against the Iraqi people.