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David Edwards · site administrator Joined: 26 Jan 2004 Posts: 162

“Dear Mr Esler,

I am a fan of newsnight however i could not help but notice the small amount of time devoted to the ORB poll finding over 1.2 million Iraqis have been mudered (deaths we are to some extent responsible for). Also the way the piece was phrased seemed to be quite misleading for a start you say the value is up from the ‘previous highest estimate 650000 deaths published by the lancet last October‘. This seems an odd comparison since nearly a year has passed so it is not surprising the estimate of deaths has increased.

“You then go on to say that that value was said to be ‘ridiculously high‘ by the Iraqi government. There is no counter view given to this statement about the accuracy of the piece by the Iraqi government. The Lancet is a well respected peer reviewed journal and as such articles in it should be taken seriously. What you have done is to undermine the credibility of the value by taking an statement from the Iraqi government who are hardly impartial.”

“Then you say the independent Iraqi body count group puts the ‘total value at nearer 75000‘. These two values can not be compared in this manner the IBC value is NOT the total number of violent deaths. This value of the number of confirmed deaths cannot reasonably be compared to estimates as to the total number of deaths in the country. Making this comparison simply undermines the original figure of 1.2 million again.

Yours sincerely

James”