[continued from previous message] 
  
 compilers point out, "it is likely that many if not most civilian 
 casualties will go unreported by the media ... our own total is certain to 
 be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or 
 recording". Of the seven mortality reports surveyed by the Overseas 
 Development Institute, the estimate in the Lancet's paper was only the 
 third highest. It remains the most thorough study published so far. 
 Extraordinary as its numbers seem, they are the most likely to be true. 
  
 And what of the idea that most of the violent deaths in Iraq are caused by 
 coalition troops? Well according to the Houston Chronicle, even Blair's 
 favourite data source, the Iraqi health ministry, reports that twice as 
 many Iraqis - and most of them civilians - are being killed by US and UK 
 forces as by insurgents. When the Pentagon claims that it has just killed 
 50 or 70 or 100 rebel fighters, we have no means of knowing who those 
 people really were. Everyone it blows to pieces becomes a terrorist. In 
 July Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the US army, claimed 
 that coalition troops had killed or captured more than 50,000 "insurgents" 
 since the start of the rebellion. Perhaps they were all Zarqawi's closest 
 lieutenants. 
  
 We can expect the US and UK governments to seek to minimise the extent of 
 their war crimes. But it's time the media stopped collaborating. 
  
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