Pollard claims that the report’s civilian death toll of 24,865 is “an entirely arbitrary figure” and “almost certainly wrong” because of a “methodology designed to come to the largest total possible” which “adds up all reports of casualties, no matter what the source or how scant the evidence”.

In fact, the IBC methodology is conservative, as a reading of the report makes clear. Deaths are only added to the count if they are reported by at least two independent press or media outlets, most of which are highly respected UK or US-based sources.

The Times is itself the tenth most frequently cited source (with press agencies Associated Press, Agence France Presse and Reuters being the top three sources). Furthermore, meticulous cross-checking is undertaken to minimise the possibility of double counting.

Such conservatism means that IBC’s totals are considerably lower than some other estimates. A little-reported, but larger-scale, survey published by the United Nations in May 2005 estimated 24,000 Iraqi deaths up to summer 2004. These UN findings have not been challenged by any government.

Pollard distracts your readers from the report’s detailed contents and from a key question that it raises, which is why the US and UK Governments have made no attempt to publish authoritative Iraqi casualty figures themselves.

In the words of 52 former UK diplomats, who wrote an open letter to Tony Blair on April 26, 2004, “it is a disgrace that the coalition forces themselves appear to have no estimate [of Iraqis killed by coalition forces]”.

More than one year on, as the death toll mounts relentlessly, the disgrace deepens.

DAVID RAMSBOTHAM
(Chief Inspector of Prisons, 1995-2001)

HUGH BEACH
(Director, Council for Arms Control, 1986-89)

TIM GARDEN
(Assistant Chief of Defence Staff, 1992-94)

JACK MENDELSOHN
(US Department of State, 1963-85)

DOUGLAS ROCHE
(Senator Emeritus, Canada)
Westminster, London

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