UPDATE:  Just as I expected don’t expect the left to call this poll a "Halliburton Poll:

One million Iraqis killed in a "liberation" that they never asked for. One million Iraqis sacrificed for oil, for a Bush-family vendetta, or simply for American egotism. One million Iraqis whose blood is not only on the hands of the people who authorized this war, but on all of our hands for allowing this war to continue unchecked. [Daily Kos]

Further reading here at Democratic Underground.  Isn’t it pathetic how these people are all just hoping and praying that over a million Iraqis are dead. 

Shock and Blog makes an additional good point for the Kos Kooks, where are all the bodies?  The mass graves of the hundreds of thousands that Saddam killed can be found all over Iraq, but for some reason 1.2 million dead bodies can’t be found anywhere. 

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Another week and yet another dubious study.  This one now claims that over one million Iraqis have died during the war in Iraq:

More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups.

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found.

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.

ORB originally found that 1.2 million people had died, but decided to go back and conduct more research in rural areas to make the survey as comprehensive as possible and then came up with the revised figure. [Reuters]

The timing of the release of this report is highly suspicious.  Many of you reading this may remember how the Lancet Study claimed that over 654,000 Iraqis died due to the war and since this study has been widely discredited after it was discovered that it was funded by liberal anti-war billionaire George Soros and was intentionally released just before the 2006 US Congressional elections for political reasons.  This report was discredited earlier this month and now at the end of the month this Opinion Research Business (ORB) re-releases a report they first released in September 2007 that claims 1.2 million Iraqis died. 

Does anyone seriously think that the re-release of this report that is now being trumpeted by the media despite being ignored in September is just mere coincidence?  Could it be that Soros or someone else on the left is trying to get a report published that isn’t linked to them to justify the bogus Lancet Study?  Well folks that is exactly what is going on.  The ORB study was done in partnership with the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies that was also the research partner for the Lancet Study.  I think Soldier’s Dad sums this up best:

Confirmation doesn’t generally mean asking the same person the same question twice. There used to be a rule in journalism that one something wasn’t true unless two different people confirmed the facts. New rules…two different people…quoting the same person…makes something true. [Milblogs]

What will be funny is that the left will surely trumpet this report as vindication of the Lancet Study which will be funny because the left was critical of ORB when they released a poll favorable to the Bush Administration:

These polls are meaningless, done only because polling organizations have squeezed large sums out of the media. I call them Halliburton polls. The assumption, common in Britain and America, that a Baghdad street is like Fifth Avenue or Bond Street goes straight to the heart of the west’s misunderstanding of Iraq. Iraqis are not used to being asked political questions by strangers in the street. Any answer risks a bullet. It is plain stupid. The polls are utterly unreliable (whether or not we support their outcome). The methodology is shocking, since there is no demographic control group to balance the 5,019 respondents or give a reliable trend line. [The Huffington Post]

Does anyone think anyone of the left will be calling this a "Halliburton Poll"? 

Probably not but I’ll give you a few examples which shows the dubious nature of this poll.  First of all, this should be obvious to everyone reading this, do you think the media in Iraq just happened to miss over one million people being killed in Iraq?  That comes out to 613 people dying every day in Iraq.  How would all the journalists in Iraq miss 613 people a day dying there?  Either it is a bogus number or the media is that incompetent.  I do not have a high opinion of the media in general but there is no way they are that bad. 

Next the survey did not cover Kurdistan which is the most stable portion of the country where terrorist attacks or any attack at all is nearly unheard of.  The surveyors didn’t even go to Anbar or Karbala provinces where in 2007 few attacks have occurred but yet the survey claimed the areas were not safe.  The Marines have discussed removing body armor in Anbar province because it has been so safe and in Karbala there is a small coalition presence there because of its stability yet no pollster could go to these areas?

Like I said dubious, but obviously the left and its media allies could care less. 

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