*HOW* many Iraqis dead??

Tired of Foley? North Korea? You’re in luck, because there’s always something new to argue about regarding Iraq, and today, it’s a new study that estimates 655,000 Iraqis have died (that would not have otherwise) since 2003.
This is, to say the least, a real show-stopper, though the NY Times reports,

But it is an estimate and not a precise count, and researchers acknowledged a margin of error that ranged from 426,369 to 793,663 deaths.

Even if one goes with the lowest number, that is rather radically different from other reports (WSJ):

The Defense Department until 2004 eschewed any effort to compute the number of Iraqi dead but this summer released a study putting the civilian casualty rate between May and August at 117 people a day. Other tabulations using different methodologies put the range of total civilian fatalities so far from about 50,000 to more than 150,000. President Bush in December said “30,000, more or less” had died in Iraq during the invasion and in the violence since.

Polimom’s in full agreement that these numbers seem extremely high. Unfortunately, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what might be accurate…. and I don’t think anybody else does, either (WaPo):

“I expect that people will be surprised by these figures,” [Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York] 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.”

That really is what it boils down to: we don’t know, and depending on where you sit (and which lens colors your world), things are either pretty good overall for Iraqis, pretty bad, or horrendous.
What is amazing to me, though, is the continuing spin from some folks on any / all unflattering news during the month of October (AP via yahoonews):

An accurate count of Iraqi deaths has been difficult to obtain, but one respected group puts its rough estimate at closer to 50,000. And at least one expert was skeptical of the new findings.
“They’re almost certainly way too high,” said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.
“This is not analysis, this is politics,” Cordesman said.

In some ways, Cordesman’s statement reminds me of the defensive position taken up by some conservatives over the Foley scandal: it doesn’t really matter whether stories are true or not, or whether somebody’s trying to sweep something under a rug someplace. No… the real problem is that somebody chose to tell us about it in October.
Sigh….
Yes, the numbers look high. On the other hand, Bush’s December figures looked low. I think that until we’re past the elections, I’ll go with a statement along the lines of… the situation in Iraq is really, really bad for the Iraqis.
Does that make you feel better about Iraq, and how things are going?  Cuz it isn’t helping me…