The British polling agency ORB (Opinion Research Business) issued survey results January 28 that confirm its earlier estimate that more than one million Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the American-led invasion and occupation. The British agency carried out the work in association with its Iraqi research partner, the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS).

In September 2007 ORB made public its finding that an estimated 1.2 million violent deaths had taken place in Iraq since March 2003. The agency commented at the time that US-occupied Iraq had “a murder rate that now exceeds the Rwanda genocide from 1994 (800,000 murdered),” with another one million wounded and millions more driven from their homes into exile, either internal or foreign.

The American media, true to form, essentially took no notice of the report, despite ORB’s indisputable pedigree—the firm has conducted polls for Britain’s Conservative Party and the BBC. The Democratic Party presidential candidates also ignored it. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon felt obliged to comment on the research.

The ORB findings vindicated the study published in the Lancet, the British medical journal, in October 2006, which put the Iraqi death toll then at approximately 655,000.

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