History > 2007 > UK > Wars > Iraq (II)

Steve Bell        The Guardian        p. 33        22.2.2007

https://www.theguardian.com/cartoons/stevebell/0,,2018723,00.html 

Prime Minister Tony Blair

This is driven by poll ratings, not by conditions in Iraq

British troops could and should have left in 2005.

Their departure has been led by political, not military, priorities

Jonathan Steele        The Guardian

Thursday February 22, 2007

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/feb/22/
iraq.iraq

Dave Brown

The Independent        20.3.2007

L to R:

Saddam Hussein,

George W. Bush,

Tony Blair.
 

Iraq hangs Saddam's former deputy

Published: 20 March 2007
AP
The Independent

Saddam Hussein's former deputy was hanged before dawn today for his part in the killings of 148 Shia Muslims, despite appeals from international human rights groups.

Taha Yassin Ramadan, 69, who was Saddam's vice president when the regime was ousted nearly four years ago, is the fourth man to be executed for the killings that followed a 1982 assassination attempt against the former leader in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.

Bassam al-Hassani, an adviser to prime minister Nouri Maliki, said precautions were taken to prevent a repeat of what happened to Saddam's half-brother and co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, who was inadvertently decapitated on the gallows during his January execution.

Ramadan was weighed before the hanging and the length of the rope was chosen accordingly, the official said.

The execution took place at 3.05am local time at a prison at an Iraqi army and police base which had been the headquarters of Saddam's military intelligence, in a predominantly Shiite district in northern Baghdad. Ramadan had been in US custody but was handed over to the Iraqis about an hour before the hanging, the official said.

Maliki has not attended any of the executions, but a committee made up of officials from his office, a judge and a prosecutor attended today's hanging, along with representatives of the justice and interior ministries and a physician.

The prosecutor read out the verdict of the appeals court upholding the death sentence along with Maliki's decision to carry it out, the official said, adding that a defence lawyer who attended the execution received Ramadan's written will. The contents were not revealed.

Ramadan appeared frightened and said words that indicated he was remorseful, al-Hassani said.

"He recited the two shahadahs. The execution was flawless," he said, adding that the hanging was videoed for official purposes. The shahadas are the declaration of faith repeated by Muslims: "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet."

Ramadan was convicted in November of murder, forced deportation and torture and sentenced to life in prison. A month later, the appeals court said the sentence was too lenient and returned his case to the High Tribunal, demanding he be sentenced to death. The court agreed.

Besides the four executed, three other defendants were sentenced to 15 years in jail in the case, while one was acquitted.

One of the highest-profile figures remaining to be tried for Saddam-era atrocities is Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of six defendants facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from Baghdad's military campaign in which more than 100,000 Kurds were killed. Al-Majid, who is Saddam's cousin, also is known as "Chemical Ali" for allegedly ordering poison gas attacks.

Ramadan, who became vice president in March 1991 and was a Revolutionary Command Council member - Iraq's highest political body under Saddam - maintained his innocence, saying his duties were limited to economic affairs.

Human Rights Watch and the International Centre for Transitional Justice had said the evidence against him was insufficient for the death penalty.

Saddam was executed on December 30 for his role in the killings. Two of his co-defendants in the Dujail case - half-brother Ibrahim who was former intelligence chief and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court - were executed in January.

Ibrahim plunged through the trap door and was beheaded by the jerk of the thick rope at the end of his fall, causing an outcry; the Iraqi government said the decapitation was an accident.

Saddam's execution drew international outrage after a clandestine video showed the former president being taunted on the gallows. Another leaked video showed Saddam's corpse with a gaping neck wound.

Saddam's regime was predominantly Sunni and many members of the sect have protested against the executions on the grounds they were politically motivated by the newly-empowered Shiite majority in Iraq. International human rights groups have, by and large, protested that the trial which found the men guilty did not provide them with due legal process.

Ramadan's body would be delivered to his family later today for burial, the official said. He refused to give a location.

Ramadan was No 20 on the US most-wanted list issued shortly after the invasion began. He was captured on August 20 2003.

He was widely considered to be as ruthless as Saddam and once headed a court that executed 44 officers for plotting to overthrow the regime.

Born in 1938, Ramadan joined the underground Baath Party in 1956 and became close to Saddam. After the 1968 coup by the party, he held several ministerial posts and became a member of the regional command in 1969.

During the 1980s he was deputy prime minister and was for a time considered the second-most powerful man in Iraq after Saddam.

He was said to have presided over many purges carried out by Saddam to eliminate rivals and strengthen his political control.

He lauded the execution of Iraqi officials found guilty of bribery as necessary "lessons for the others" and often took a harder line than Saddam in denouncing the United States, Israel and other states deemed hostile to Baghdad.

He once described the US Congress as little more than an extension of Israel's Knesset, or parliament.

    Iraq hangs Saddam's former deputy, I, 20.3.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2374721.ece

10.45am

60% think Iraq war was wrong,

poll shows

Tuesday March 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Peter Walker and agencies

More than half the British population would not trust the government again if it said war was needed to protect national security, a poll published today revealed.

The survey (pdf) - commissioned by the BBC - found that nearly 60% believed the US and UK were not right to invade Iraq exactly four years ago. It showed that 29% thought the conflict was justified.

Asked whether, "given their experiences of the war in Iraq", they would trust a British government that said it needed to take military action because a country posed a direct threat to national security, 51% said they would not, with 32% saying they would.

In contrast, 57% of people would back British military action overseas if it was to assist disaster relief or stop genocide.

The Iraq war has not left Britons feeling more secure - only 5% said they felt the country was a safer place, with 55% saying they felt less safe.

The final finding of the poll, which was carried out early this month, was that exactly half of all respondents believed the war and its aftermath would be very or fairly important in making their mind up at the next general election.

The survey was published a day after a poll of people in all 18 Iraqi provinces revealed an increasingly pessimistic outlook. Less than 40% of the more than 2,200 Iraqis surveyed said things in their lives were generally good.

In contrast, a similar poll, conducted in late 2005, revealed an equivalent figure of 71%.

Only 26% of people said they felt safe in their own neighbourhoods, while more than half said they had sometimes avoided markets or other crowded places.

Almost nine in 10 of those surveyed said they feared they or a family member could become a victim of violence, while only 5% said they worried "hardly at all" about this possibility.

Only 38% of those asked said the situation in Iraq was better than it had been before the US-led invasion, while 50% said things were worse.

Also today, anti-war campaigners will hold a people's assembly in central London to mark the anniversary of the start of the conflict.

Among the speakers will be the US Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a liberal outsider for the Democratic presidential nomination, and MPs including John McDonnell and Michael Meacher, both declared candidates for the Labour leadership.

George Galloway, of Respect, and the Conservative MP Michael Ancram will also speak, as will Rose Gentle, who has campaigned against the conflict since her 19-year-old son, Gordon, was killed in Iraq.

    60% think Iraq war was wrong, poll shows, G, 20.3.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2038378,00.html

12.15pm

Friendly fire victim's widow

in direct appeal to Bush

Thursday March 15, 2007
Press Association
Guardian Unlimited

The widow of friendly fire victim Matty Hull today appealed to the US president for help in finding out the truth about her husband's death.

Susan Hull said she had met George Bush in November 2003 and asked him whether there was anything he could do to help with investigations into the death of the 25-year-old, who was killed when a US A-10 plane fired on a British convoy in southern Iraq in March that year.

"He assured me that he would do all he could to help," she said. "President Bush, this is the last day you can help us. We ask that you give the coroner just one single page."

The Oxford inquest into Lance Corporal of Horse Hull's death has heard that the ground controller, codenamed Manilla Hotel, was "gobsmacked" that one of two A-10 planes he was controlling had attacked the convoy instead of the target he had intended them to.

British forward air controller Stuart Matthews told the Oxfordshire assistant deputy coroner, Andrew Walker, that Manilla Hotel had given no permission to open fire on this target.

However, the Hull family believe that questions Mr Matthews was asked about the communications and procedure during the incident have been blacked out of the US Friendly Fire Investigation Board (FFIB) report given to the coroner.

Mrs Hull, flanked by Lance Corporal Hull's mother, Mandy, 46, his father, Richard, 50, and his 18-year-old sister, Lauren McCourt, appealed for this section of the document to be given to the coroner.

"The coroner has asked twice for this document, following conflicting suggestions from the Ministry of Defence regarding what evidence was in his possession," the 30-year-old said.

"Despite the coroner's repeated requests, he still does not have it. We have 1,110 lines of evidence from this document - but 11 are blanked out.

"To President Bush and the US government, we implore you to release the 11 lines and let the coroner have these today so that our family can feel more satisfied with the transparency of this inquest."

Last-minute efforts by the Hull family's lawyers to secure the evidence proved fruitless, and Mrs Hull decided to make a direct appeal to the US government.

Mr Walker has previously voiced his anger at what he sees as the US "seeking to bind" his hands.

Mrs Hull has, on a number of occasions, walked out of the inquest in exasperation and, when asked by the coroner how she felt about the inquest being adjourned in an attempt to persuade the US to declassify a cockpit recording of the friendly fire incident, she said she was "not surprised but very disappointed".

When he reopens the inquest on Monday, Mr Walker has agreed to take a "pragmatic" approach and use the US cockpit recording, declassified only for viewing by the MoD, himself and the Hull family, rather than a leaked copy obtained by the Sun newspaper.

He said he hoped that, in return, the US would provide what he regarded as "vital" further evidence, including details of pilots' training hours - the inquest previously heard they had no conflict experience - a copy of the US rules of engagement, and an uncensored version of the FFIB interviews with the pilots and their ground controllers.

However, despite renewing these requests every day this week, he had been told by the MoD lawyer Leigh Ann Mulcahy that they had been declined.

Solicitor Geraldine McCool said Mrs Hull did not want to see the documents herself, but wanted the coroner to see them so he could conduct his inquiry.

"Can you imagine how frustrating this is for the family? We have the feeling that we are being treated differently," she said.

The inquest continues.

    Friendly fire victim's widow in direct appeal to Bush, G, 15.3.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2034688,00.html

Saddam’s sons reburied

March 14, 2007
From The Times

TIKRIT The remains of Saddam Hussein’s sons were exhumed and reburied next to the former Iraqi leader, a relative said.

Uday and Qusay Hussein, who were killed by American troops in Mosul in July 2003, were earlier buried in a cemetery in the village, outside the city of Tikrit.

“Today we dug up their remains and reburied them next to Saddam Hussein in the hall where he was laid to rest,” the relative, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

Saddam, who was hanged on December 31, was buried in Awjah, his home village, in northern Iraq.

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, two Saddam aides who were hanged in January, are buried in a garden outside the hall, which used to be a gathering place for condolence meetings under the ousted regime.

The three men were sentenced to death for crimes against humanity in the killing of 148 Shias from Dujail, north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt in 1982 against Saddam. (AFP)

    Saddam’s sons reburied, Ts, 14.3.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1511404.ece

Soldiers of misfortune

March 14, 2007 7:40 AM
The Guardian
Martin Bell

QUESTION: What is the one thing you would most like to see happen by this time next year?

On the issue which above all others produced the Labour landslide nearly 10 years ago - public trust in public life - the government's record has been lamentable.

Its failures have been felt most fatally by the military. They were deployed to Iraq, on the basis of a falsehood, to fight an unwinnable war. More than 100 have paid for it with their lives. Then they were sent to Afghanistan on a peace support operation which turned immediately into high-intensity warfare.

The government that sent them has not a minister, or even a junior minister, with personal experience of soldiering or warfare.

In the year ahead I am looking for a recognition by the government of its responsibilities to the men and women who do the fighting for them.

This can no longer take the form of tributes in the House of Commons. It means making the military covenant the law of the land. The covenant is the contract that soldiers sign on to when they join up: they agree to give up certain rights and to make, if necessary, the ultimate sacrifice. In return the nation undertakes to treat them well and provide fairly for them and their families.

Lately this has not been happening. The covenant is in tatters. An example is the under-funding of the residential centres run by Combat Stress the armed forces' mental health society. The society has 8,000 clients on its books and 1,000 new ones seek its help every year - mostly ex-soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Many were the toughest of the tough, frontline soldiers from the Falklands and now Iraq. They are not receiving the care that they deserve, and to which they are entitled under the military covenant.

The Americans have their GI bill. We have just a piece of paper. It is time this was turned into law.

    Soldiers of misfortune, G, 14.3.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_bell/2007/03/martin_bell.html

Blair is called to account

over abandoned troops

Published: 11 March 2007
The Independent on Sunday
By Terri Judd, Sophie Goodchild
and Andrew Johnson

British soldiers returning from war are suffering unprecedented levels of mental health problems amid claims that the long-standing "military covenant" guaranteeing them proper care is in tatters.

More than 21,000 full-time servicemen and women who have served in Iraq, as well as army reservists, have developed anxiety and depression, an Independent on Sunday investigation can reveal today.

Official figures suggest two dozen military personnel have killed themselves since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 ­ a figure which includes 17 confirmed suicides and six where inquests are pending. Combat Stress, the charity for war veterans suffering from mental problems, has warned that it is seeing an annual rise of 26 per cent in its caseload; more than 1,000 former soldiers are homeless.

The figures prompted military experts, politicians and mental health charities to claim that Tony Blair is in breach of his duty of care for those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Politicians, leading figures in the arts and entertainment, and relatives of dead soldiers have put their names to a letter published in today's Independent on Sunday. Signatories include the playwright Harold Pinter, campaigner Bianca Jagger, Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, and MPs Peter Kilfoyle and Ben Wallace.

Their letter calls on the Prime Minister to give the young men and women who risk their lives for this country the just and fair treatment that they deserve. Readers are also invited to sign the letter, which will be handed to Mr Blair on 20 March, the fourth anniversary of the Iraq invasion.

"Servicemen and women are receiving insufficient treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder," it says. "Many are desperately ill, out of work, homeless and even suicidal. We believe that the military covenant is broken, and that you have neglected the young men and women who carry out your orders."

Senior military figures weighed in last night, accusing the Government of breaching the military covenant, which states that in return for fighting wars on behalf of the nation, the Government must provide all care necessary.

The extent of the hidden costs of war is exposed in the same week that five British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, the highest toll since 2003; 6,600 British troops have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 600 flown back to Britain for treatment. But Combat Stress and the British Legion say even these figures grossly underestimate the scale of psychological injuries among troops.They accuse the Ministry of Defence of abandoning vulnerable soldiers, some of whom experience crippling nightmares and flashbacks, by closing dedicated military hospitals and putting troops in civilian wards.

Air Marshal Sir John Walker said he believed the military covenant is at " breaking point". The former head of Defence Intelligence said: "Has the covenant been broken? Well, in my opinion it has certainly been stretched to breaking point. I am afraid sending our forces into an illegal war is a severe breach of trust."

At the end of the month, Britain will become the only country in Europe without a dedicated military hospital when it closes Haslar Hospital at Gosport, Hampshire. Troops will be treated at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.

But letters published this weekend in The Observer reveal that soldiers are receiving inadequate treatment. In one case, Jamie Cooper, the youngest British soldier wounded in Iraq, spent a night lying in his own faeces after staff allegedly allowed his colostomy bag to overflow. Other servicemen complain of being left without pain relief and of unbearable noise on the ward. The revelations follow the recent scandal over conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, which has prompted a review by President George Bush.

Many battle-scarred troops also face waiting up to 18 months for treatment on the NHS.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are united in their condemnation of the Government's failure to give traumatised troops the care they deserve. Dr Liam Fox, the Tory Defence spokesman, said there was no doubt that the military covenant had been broken. "British forces are severely overstretched."

Admiral Sir Alan West, the former First Sea Lord and the last head of the Royal Navy, said extra support is needed if Britain is to carry on with the same levels of troop deployment.

Roger Bacon, the father of Major Matthew Bacon, who died in a roadside bomb attack, said that Tony Blair had got Britain into an "appalling mess" .

An MoD spokesman said that the defence budget had increased and that junior soldiers had received a substantial pay rise.

    Blair is called to account over abandoned troops, IoS, 11.3.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2347521.ece

Scandal of treatment

for wounded Iraq veterans

· Soldiers 'denied proper hospital care'
· Letters reveal anguish of families

Sunday March 11, 2007
The Observer
Ned Temko and Mark Townsend

A shocking picture of neglect and the appalling treatment of wounded British troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan emerged last night in a remarkable series of letters from soldiers' families obtained by The Observer.

The sheaf of complaints, passed on by deeply alarmed senior military sources, claims that soldiers have been deprived of adequate pain relief and emotional support, and in some cases are unable to sleep because of night time noise in the NHS facilities caring for them.

The NHS last night said that it had launched an inquiry into the complaints.

One letter sent to the MoD and NHS managers reveals how the youngest British soldier wounded in Iraq, Jamie Cooper, was forced to spend a night lying in his own faeces after staff at Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital allowed his colostomy bag to overflow. On another occasion his medical air mattress was allowed to deflate, leaving him in 'considerable pain' overnight despite an alarm going off.

Another complaint alleges that one serviceman suffered more than 14 hours in agony without pain relief because no relevant staff were on duty. Others claim that supplies of pain relief have run out on wards where injured troops are being cared for, and that in one instance a geriatric patient tried to climb into an injured soldier's bed by mistake.

Months after the row over mixed military-civilian wards, the new revelations open potentially more serious allegations concerning the level of treatment being provided to seriously injured troops. The revelations also follow the recent scandal surrounding conditions at the Americans' flagship domestic military hospital, the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington, which prompted President George Bush to order a review of the nation's military hospitals.

Details of the complaints regarding British soldiers' care last night provoked shock and indignation both from Opposition politicians and senior military figures. Tony Blair's long-time Chief of Defence Staff, Lord Guthrie, said the letters revealed a 'scandalous' failure of care which the government and the military had an 'urgent' duty to fix. In remarks that will be seen as particularly damning given his personal friendship with the Prime Minister, Guthrie added: 'The handling of the medical casualties from both Afghanistan and Iraq is a scandal.'

He said the blame did not lie with NHS staff, but with a 'lack of leadership and drive' by senior military medical officers and government ministers in addressing the need to provide purely military-run care for at least the most serious casualties. Guthrie said that Blair and other senior figures who had visited Selly Oak had been misled about the level of care currently being provided. 'They were presented with a whitewashed version,' he said. Top military and political leaders, Guthrie added, 'seem more interested in finding excuses for why things are not good than in correcting them'.

The Tory shadow defence spokesman, Liam Fox, accused the government of 'an act of betrayal against our bravest soldiers'. Fox will raise the issue in the Commons this week and seek an urgent reply from defence secretary, Des Browne, on each of the cases raised in the letters.

Sue Freeth, welfare director for the Royal British Legion, which has 600,000 members, revealed they had, for the first time in its 86-year history, put forward a motion questioning medical treatment for troops. She said: 'We are very concerned about treatment. We know that the MoD policy department are trying to address it but some of the areas are beyond their control.'

The complaints include an impassioned protest from the parents of Cooper, 18, the youngest British soldier injured in Iraq, detailing a series of alleged lapses in his care at Selly Oak. Their son, the letter concludes, had been 'sent to Iraq straight from training with no real military knowledge and [is] not receiving the care and attention that is needed for his recovery.'

A letter from the mother of another soldier treated at Selly Oak, corporal Alex Weldon, speaks of 'grubby' surroundings, unbearable noise levels and inadequate visiting facilities and concludes: 'Surely the rest of us - family members, military personnel or hospital staff and authorities, have a duty of care to these brave men and women.'

A further five-page document is from Weldon himself, written on behalf of a number of wounded soldiers on the ward after having thought 'long and hard' about doing so. It complains of repeated failures to give adequate and timely pain relief and insensitive comments by consultants.

Another letter is a handwritten plea for help sent last week from the mother of 22-year-old Ben Parkinson, who was injured in Afghanistan. It accuses the military of breaking a promise to give him a place in military rehabilitation facility at Headley Court in Surrey. She says both she and her husband have now had to abandoned work in order to care for their son at the London area civilian hospital where he has been sent.

'Goalposts are moved constantly,' the letter says, adding that they have been told that assurances of access to treatment at Headley Court - including a brochure still being handed out to arriving casualties at Selly Oak - are 'out of date.' 'Ben fought in the war in Iraq at age 18, he covered [during] the firemen's strike, served for seven months in Kosovo... and then fought in the "never-a-shot-be-fired" war in Afghanistan,' his mother protests. 'He undertook "P" company seven times, such was his determination to be a para. Surely he has earned the right to a military rehab.'

An MoD spokesman said: 'The decision to care for military patients within specialist NHS units was driven by medical advice - the severity and complexity of modern military injuries requires immediate access to the highest levels of specialist medial and nursing care, which can only be found in a few large hospital complexes in the UK, such as Birmingham.'

A spokesman for University Hospital Birmingham Trust, which includes Selly Oak, said: 'While we can not comment on individual cases the type of injuries that soldiers sustain and that we treat are very complex - therefore their pain control is very complex.

'We investigate all complaints and some of the complaints including the Cooper family's are being investigated.'

    Scandal of treatment for wounded Iraq veterans, O, 11.3.2007, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2031200,00.html

Could 650,000 Iraqis

really have died

because of the invasion?

March 05, 2007
From The Times
Anjana Ahuja

The statistics made headlines all over the world when they were published in The Lancet in October last year. More than 650,000 Iraqis – one in 40 of the population – had died as a result of the American-led invasion in 2003. The vast majority of these “excess” deaths (deaths over and above what would have been expected in the absence of the occupation) were violent. The victims, both civilians and combatants, had fallen prey to airstrikes, car bombs and gunfire.

Body counts in conflict zones are assumed to be ballpark – hospitals, record offices and mortuaries rarely operate smoothly in war – but this was ten times any other estimate. Iraq Body Count, an antiwar web-based charity that monitors news sources, put the civilian death toll for the same period at just under 50,000, broadly similar to that estimated by the United Nations Development Agency.

The implication of the Lancet study, which involved Iraqi doctors knocking on doors and asking residents about recent deaths in the household, was that Iraqis were being killed on an horrific scale. The controversy has deepened rather than evaporated. Several academics have tried to find out how the Lancet study was conducted; none regards their queries as having been addressed satisfactorily. Researchers contacted by The Times talk of unreturned e-mails or phone calls, or of being sent information that raises fresh doubts.

Iraq Body Count says there is “considerable cause for scepticism” and has complained that its figures had been misleadingly cited in the The Lancet as supporting evidence.

One critic is Professor Michael Spagat, a statistician from Royal Holloway College, University of London. He and colleagues at Oxford University point to the possibility of “main street bias” – that people living near major thoroughfares are more at risk from car bombs and other urban menaces. Thus, the figures arrived at were likely to exceed the true number. The Lancet study authors initially told The Times that “there was no main street bias” and later amended their reply to “no evidence of a main street bias”.

Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word “casualties” to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the “three-to-one rule” – the idea that for every death, there are three injuries – there should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports.

“The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions,” contends Professor Spagat, who believes the paper was poorly reviewed. “They published a sampling methodology that can overestimate deaths by a wide margin but respond to criticism by claiming that they did not actually follow the procedures that they stated.” The paper had “no scientific standing”. Did he rule out the possibility of fraud? “No.”

If you factor in politics, the heat increases. One of The Lancet authors, Dr Les Roberts, campaigned for a Democrat seat in the US House of Representatives and has spoken out against the war. Dr Richard Horton, editor of the The Lancet is also antiwar. He says: “I believe this paper was very thoroughly reviewed. Every piece of work we publish is criticised – and quite rightly too. No research is perfect. The best we can do is make sure we have as open, transparent and honest a debate as we can. Then we'll get as close to the truth as possible. That is why I was so disappointed many politicians rejected the findings of this paper before really thinking through the issues.”

Knocking on doors in a war zone can be a deadly thing to do. But active surveillance – going out and measuring something – is regarded as a necessary corrective to passive surveillance, which relies on reports of deaths (and, therefore, usually produces an underestimate).

Iraq Body Count relies on passive surveillance, counting civilian deaths from at least two independent reports from recognised newsgathering agencies and leading English-language newspapers ( The Times is included). So Professor Gilbert Burnham, Dr Les Roberts and Dr Shannon Doocy at the Centre for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland, decided to work through Iraqi doctors, who speak the language and know the territory.

They drafted in Professor Riyadh Lafta, at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, as a co-author of the Lancet paper. Professor Lafta supervised eight doctors in 47 different towns across the country. In each town, says the paper, a main street was randomly selected, and a residential street crossing that main street was picked at random.

The doctors knocked on doors and asked residents how many people in that household had died. A person needed to have been living at that address for three months before a death for it to be included. It was deemed too risky to ask if the dead person was a combatant or civilian, but they did ask to see death certificates. More than nine out of ten interviewees, the Lancet paper claims, were able to produce death certificates. Out of 1,849 households contacted, only 15 refused to participate. From this survey, the epidemiologists estimated the number of Iraqis who died after the invasion as somewhere between 393,000 and 943,000. The headline figure became 650,000, of which 601,000 were violent deaths. Even the lowest figure would have raised eyebrows.

Dr Richard Garfield, an American academic who had collaborated with the authors on an earlier study, declined to join this one because he did not think that the risk to the interviewers was justifiable. Together with Professor Hans Rosling and Dr Johan Von Schreeb at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Dr Garfield wrote to The Lancet to insist there must be a “substantial reporting error” because Burnham et al suggest that child deaths had dropped by two thirds since the invasion. The idea that war prevents children dying, Dr Garfield implies, points to something amiss.

Professor Burnham told The Times in an e-mail that he had “full confidence in Professor Lafta and full faith in his interviewers”, although he did not directly address the drop in child mortality. Dr Garfield also queries the high availability of death certificates. Why, he asks, did the team not simply approach whoever was issuing them to estimate mortality, instead of sending interviewers into a war zone?

Professor Rosling told The Times that interviewees may have reported family members as dead to conceal the fact that relatives were in hiding, had fled the country, or had joined the police or militia. Young men can also be associated with several households (as a son, a husband or brother), so the same death might have been reported several times.

Professor Rosling says that, despite e-mails, “the authors haven’t provided us with the information needed to validate what they did”. He would like to see a live blog set up for the authors and their critics so that the matter can be clarified.

Another critic is Dr Madelyn Hsaio-Rei Hicks, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who specialises in surveying communities in conflict. In her letter to The Lancet, she pointed out that it was unfeasible for the Iraqi interviewing team to have covered 40 households in a day, as claimed. She wrote: “Assuming continuous interviewing for ten hours despite 55C heat, this allows 15 minutes per interview, including walking between households, obtaining informed consent and death certificates.”

Does she think the interviews were done at all? Dr Hicks responds: “I’m sure some interviews have been done but until they can prove it I don’t see how they could have done the study in the way they describe.”

Professor Burnham says the doctors worked in pairs and that interviews “took about 20 minutes”. The journal Nature, however, alleged last week that one of the Iraqi interviewers contradicts this. Dr Hicks says: : “I have started to suspect that they [the American researchers] don’t actually know what the interviewing team did. The fact that they can’t rattle off basic information suggests they either don’t know or they don’t care.”

And the corpses? Professor Burnham says that, according to reports, mortuaries and cemeteries have run out of space. He says that the Iraqi team has asked for data to remain confidential because of “possible risks” to both interviewers and interviewees.

Children tell of their hopes and fears

Muhammad Sabba, 8, from Toubchi

What is your favourite thing? I love football

What is your least favourite thing? Car bombs

What do you want to be when you grow up? A doctor

Why? Because I want to help people and cure the sick. Iraq needs doctors

What are your thoughts about the future? I am hoping there will be peace and security. If there is peace, I’ll be happy and enjoy life. A life without car bombs

Ayah Ali Abderadha, 11, from Toubchi

Favourite thing? My family and my neighbours. Also I like the Arabic language

Least favourite thing? The awful situation, because we’re afraid of going out

What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to be an Arabic teacher

Thoughts about the future? That the crisis we are experiencing will disappear and that I can educate the children and the students

Rawan Muhammad Fawzi, 5, from al-Adhamiaya

Favourite thing? Playing a computer game called Foulleh

Least favourite thing? When they’re shooting

Why? The Americans came into our house and looked through our house. Then they interrogated my mum. Then some others came

What do you want to be? I want to be a doctor because then I can heal the sick. If there is peace I’ll go out and play with my friends

Ahmed Issam, 11, Hadithiya

Favourite thing? I love the ballet, playing and studying

Least favourite thing? All the war and destruction because many people die

What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to be a famous ballet dancer

Thoughts about the future? I want there to be peace in Iraq and in the entire world

Ahlam Muhammad Feleyah, 9, from al-Adhamiya

Favourite thing? Playing with my friends and my teddy bear

Least favourite thing? I don’t like the Americans because they attacked Iraq

What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to work as a doctor. It’s the best thing you can do. It’s what I want to do

The future? If there is peace I want to go out and play with my friends on the street

Could 650,000 Iraqis really have died because of the invasion?, Ts, 5.3.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1469636.ece