Remember the Lancet reported study by Johns Hopkins last fall? 655,000 Iraqis dead it said. Not 12,000 as the Iraqi government proposed; not 35,000 as per the UN; not 60,000 of the Iraq Body Count group. 655,000. Dead.
It was a calculation, of course. No one has, or ever will have, a count finger by finger, toe by toe. And as a calculation it was attacked, dismissed and derided by Great Warriors Bush and Blair: “not credible;” “unrepresentative.”
Well it turns out, through the wonders of leaked documents, that “the chief scientific adviser to the Defense Ministry, Roy Anderson, [had] described the methods used in the study as “robust” and “close to best practice.”
That is, Mr. Blair’s own Defense Ministry accepted the estimates while the PM was yapping away.
IHT: Brits Knew
Tom Dispatch adds to the report.
Al-Jazeera front and centers the discovery.
Meanwhile, Bush’s great pal, “Saudi King Abdullah told Arab leaders at a summit on Wednesdsay that illegal foreign occupation and sectarian violence in Iraq was threatening a civil war.
“In beloved Iraq, blood flows between brothers in the shadow of illegitimate foreign occupation and hateful sectarianism, threatening a civil war,” he said in a speech.”
Though King A recently canceled a state dinner with President B.