That’s the astronomical toll of pain and suffering inflicted by the ‘coalition’ invasion and occupation. Yet somehow that news was lost in all the bluff and hype of the ‘surge’, as US Generals attempt to project a through-the-looking-glass version of Iraq where a triumph for ‘democracy’ is always just around the corner.

Opinion Research Business (ORB), BBC Newsnight’s chosen pollsters, conducted a survey of 1,500 Iraqi households in August in which people were asked if anyone in the household had died as a result of the conflict since 2003*. This is the usual method for assessing the number of deaths in a warzone, and has been used in Darfur and the former Yugoslavia. ORB concludes “Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households, this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003. Calculating the affect from the margin of error we believe that the range is a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063.”

Detailed assessments such as those conducted by Iraq Body Count**, which rely on deaths being recorded in at least two media sources, typically offer a statistic of around 20% of actual fatalities. In sheer numbers, what is happening in Iraq has now surpassed the horrors of the massacres in Rwanda and is in the same order of magnitude as the great crimes of the twentieth century. And the government response to this is... nothing. The same cynical silence which greeted last year’s Lancet report estimating Iraqi deaths at around 600,000.

DOGMAS OF WAR

These figures should be provoking howls of outrage from the liberal press at the bloody mess into which the Iraqi people have been hurled by Bush and the UK government. But as the number of deaths reaches the limits of human imagining, the sheer scale of the carnage prevents understanding. Perhaps the mainstream press over here have given this survey so little attention because the real implication of its horrific contents is that our leaders are out and out war criminals. Not just technical war criminals, who merely went to war illegally, but out and out bloody-handed tyrants who put Milosevic et al in the shade.

The poll also questioned the surviving relatives on the way in which their loved ones were killed. It broke down as 48% gunshot wounds, 20% car bomb, 9% aerial bombardment, 6% accidents and 6% another blast/ordnance. This poll didn’t attempt to apportion blame for individual deaths but the earlier Lancet poll showed that 56% of deaths were directly attributable to Coalition forces i.e. that 350,000 were identifiably killed by US or UK armed forces. There’s no reason to think that that proportion has changed and, with the ‘surge’, there’s every reason to think it has gone up.

BULLET POINTS

How then is the Coalition accomplishing this carnage? The fact that deaths by shooting are so prevalent demonstrates the close-up nature of the coalition/insurgency conflict. For the past four years, the American military has sent around 1,000 patrols each day into hostile neighbourhoods, looking to capture or kill insurgents. (Since February 2007, this has increased to nearly 5,000 patrols a day, if Iraqi troops participating in the American surge are included).

These patrols are operating in areas where anyone could be an insurgent. If you were patrolling downtown Baghdad, would you take any chances? Their orders are to break down doors, shoot at anything suspicious, and throw grenades into rooms or homes where there is any chance of resistance. If they encounter tangible resistance, they call in artillery and/or air power rather than try to invade a building. If a patrol is ambushed or comes under attack from a roadside bomb, soldiers rely on their superior fire-power to extricate themselves from the situation. According to US military statistics, these patrols currently result in around 3,000 firefights every month, an average of just under 100 per day. The US army is currently firing more bullets than can be manufactured - with that amount of lead flying around, such high levels of civilian casualties seem not implausible but inevitable.

As Coalition troops find it harder to operate on the ground in Iraq, the US are massively expanding their aerial attack capacity. There was a fivefold increase in the amount of munitions dropped on the country in the first six months of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006. Squadrons of attack planes have been added to the in-country fleet. The air reconnaissance arm has almost doubled since last year, with the powerful B1-B bomber recalled to action over the country. The stage is set for an increase in civilian casualties as notoriously indiscriminate US air power is unleashed on the Iraqi people. Air Force planes have struck “factories” producing makeshift bombs, weapons caches uncovered by ground troops and, in one instance, “several houses insurgents were using as fire positions”.

Iraq has already become a testing ground for a new breed of remote control or robot aircraft. The MQ-9 “Reaper”, already being deployed, is a pilotless aircraft, capable of carrying four Hellfire missiles, plus two 500lb bombs. “It is possible that in our lifetime we will be able to run a war without ever leaving the US,” said one colonel in the US Air Force. Hey presto! Remote controlled genocide. More endless news stories about Maddie anyone?

* www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78

** See www.iraqbodycount.org

'NOT ONE MORE DEATH' - central London demonstration on 8 October - assemble Trafalgar Square, 1pm. See www.stopwar.org.uk for more.