Plunderbund

Tony Blair says no way! That CAN’T be true- even though people in his own administration support the study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins that says 654,965 Iraqis have died as a result of the war.

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Iraq death toll debated

LONDON, March 26 (UPI) — British officials and scientists are debating the accuracy of a report that estimates 655,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the war in Iraq.

After the medical journal the Lancet published the estimate in October 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesperson said the estimate is nowhere near accurate, the BBC reported.

But the chief scientific adviser to the British Minister of Defense has said the methods used by the study’s authors at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health were “close to best practice” and its design was “robust,” according to documents obtained by the BBC with a Freedom of Information request.

Another statistician said the said the study’s extrapolation method was “tried and tested.”

The Iraqi Health Ministry has put the Iraqi death toll at less than 10 percent of the toll in the survey published in the Lancet.

If the number in the Lancet is accurate, 2.5 percent of the Iraqi population has been killed since the war began in 2003, the BBC reported.