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Censored again
Polina Aksamentova
After additional research undertaken in rural Iraq, Britain's ORB
(Opinion Research Business)
polling agency has largely confirmed on 28 January its earlier
estimate that over a million
Iraqis have died since the invasion of British and American
forces.
The revised estimate puts the
death toll at 1,033,000 people
down from the 1.2m-figure published in August.
The initial analysis was based
on surveys from primarily urban
areas. ORB decided to check their
results when critics suggested
that such a sample inflated the
estimate.
The agency interviewed additional 600 Iraqis in rural communities bringing the total sample to
2,160 people. All participants
were asked how many members
of their household, if any, had died
violently since the invasion: 14%
said one relative, 3% said two relatives and 1% said three. Both
estimates are based on the 1997
census, which counted 4.05m
households.
If the margin of error is considered the death toll ranges from
946,000 to 1,120,000 people
between March 2003 and August
2007.
So the new sample did, in fact,
yield a lower estimate, but the
results are by and large the same:
a million civilians died because of
British/US-led hostilities.
Like the original poll in August,
the new  and now more credible
 estimate was not reported in the
major British media.
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