WASHINGTON - September 18 - A new poll conducted in Iraq has estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. These results support last month's independent conclusion by the U.S.-based group Just Foreign Policy that the Iraqi death toll had surpassed one million. Just Foreign Policy's frequently updated estimate is based on an extrapolation from a study published in The Lancet in October 2006.

The new poll was conducted in August by ORB, a British polling agency that has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005.

The existence of two studies, conducted independently and employing different methods, which indicate that over a million Iraqis have been killed constitutes strong evidence that the Iraqi death toll is much higher than most policymakers and journalists have so far acknowledged. As Bob Herbert wrote in Saturday's New York Times, "Based on all available evidence, it seems unreasonable to believe that fewer than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed thus far. Many very serious scholars believe the total is much higher."

ORB asked a representative sample of 1,499 adults the following question:

How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (i.e. as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.

Responses were as follows:

None: 78%
One: 16%
Two: 5%
Three: 1%
Four or more: 0.2%

Given that the 2005 census counted 4,050,597 households in Iraq, this suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the 2003 invasion. (Details can be found on the ORB website: http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78)

Just Foreign Policy currently estimates that just over 1.05 million Iraqis have been killed. (More information is available at: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html)

Robert Naiman, national coordinator of Just Foreign Policy, has shown that the two studies are consistent with each other. (See Naiman's article on the Huffington Post, "UK Poll Confirms Extrapolation of Lancet's Iraq Death Toll": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/uk-poll-consistent-with-1_b_64475.html)

Just Foreign Policy is an independent and non-partisan membership organization founded in 2006. Our founding board includes Jeff Faux, Founding President of the Economic Policy Institute; Vicente Navarro, Professor of Public Policy, Sociology, and Policy Studies at Health Policy and Management and International Health at Johns Hopkins University; Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP; and former Congressman Tom Andrews. More information is available on our web site: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org

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