U.S. Invasion Has Killed 655,000 Iraqis

A woman grieves in Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, Iraq, Monday, March 12, 2007, during a funeral procession of victims of Sunday's suicide car bomb attack. A suicide car bomber barreled into a flatbed truck packed with Shiite pilgrims on their way back from Karbala Sunday, killing at least 32 people, police said. (AP Photo/Adil al-Khazali)
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A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins physician and epidemiologist.

Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey.

"I expect that people will be surprised by these figures," she said. "I think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq."

The survey was conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. They visited 1,849 randomly selected households that had an average of seven members each. One person in each household was asked about deaths in the 14 months before the invasion and in the period after.