Caroline, I agree. And the survey appears to be nothing more than a poll based extrapolation. It’s not based on a full body count.

Marc Herold achieved fame for his Afghanistan “body count” that turned out to consist of him rifling through news reports (some which were obviously unreliable)and adding up all the claimed deaths. It was totally debunked (especially when it was found that he had counted the same deaths over and over because they were reported in different papers and that his “estimates” even exceeded what the Taliban’s propaganda machine was claiming) and became a huge embarrassment for the MSM who had fawned so lovingly over it. But at least he actually counted bodies (even if he did count many of them several times)

If I was to be seriously cynical I would suggest that this survey may well have a similar genesis to Herolds survey. A lot of people suggested that Herolds final figure was based more the need to be able to say ‘look, more Afghan’s have died than Americans did on 9/11 so the U.S is worse than the Taliban.’

In Iraq one of the issues the anti-war people have always been unable to counter is the fact that by using another extrapolation (based on average deaths over past decades), more than 100,000 Iraqi’s have probably been saved simply by virtue of Saddam and the Baathists no longer being in power. Now guess what pops up just before the election, a survey that supposedly shows more that a 100,000 having died because of the liberation – the answer to the horrible reality that if they’d had their way, Saddam would still be in power and many more would have died than have as a result of the liberation.

How convenient.