“This is a mayday call to all colleagues around the world to STOP writing about the Iraqi issue without having enough information from reliable sources. People are getting killed here and the country is virtually dying and it is not so human to rob the dead! IBC supposedly worked to correct the number of Iraqis killed because of the US occupation of Iraq. All I saw in this violent attack upon the Lancet was a harsh offensive that adds the killing of truth to whatever number of killings that actually took place by gunfire and bombs.”

It is the single most important statistic regarding the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq. How many Iraqis have been killed?

655,000.

655,000 Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

I have worked for eight months in Iraq as a journalist, witnessing the carnage on a daily basis, visiting the morgues with bodies and body parts piled into them, meeting family after family who had lost a loved one, or more … Finally, we get an accurate figure that shows how immense the scale of the long drawn carnage really is.

The first Lancet Report, published on October 29, 2004, reported that there were 100,000 “excess” Iraqi deaths as the result of the US invasion and occupation. (Excess deaths are the difference between pre-invasion and post-invasion mortality rates.) Whenever I have given public presentations about the occupation, I have invariably found myself in a difficult position due to the lack of a more realistic and recent figure I can cite, knowing full well that the number was grossly higher than 100,000.

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