Yes, I have read that statement...

Here is the full email with full context (and editorial comments form the wiki author of course):

"The results of the study were politically sensitive, since a heavy death toll could raise questions regarding the humanitarian justifications on the eve of a contested US presidential election. Critics objected to the timing of the report, claiming it was hastily prepared and published despite what they perceived as its poor quality in order to sway the U.S. electorate. On this topic, Les Roberts stated "I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election. My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq. I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives."[20][17] He replied to criticisms by Professor John Allen Paulos of the Temple University Math Department of "an expedient rush to publish" with

Dear Dr. Paulos,
I read your note below with some sadness. FYI, there was a rush to publish as I have said in every major interview I have given.
A) I have done over 20 mortality surveys in recent years and have never taken more than a week to produce and release a report (because people dying is important) until this article. Thus, this was the least rushed mortality result I have ever produced.
B) We finished the survey on the 20 Sept. If this had not come out until mid-Nov. or later, in the politicized lens of Baghdad (where the chief of police does not allow his name to be made public and where all the newly trained Iraqi soldiers I saw had bandannas to hide their faces to avoid their families being murdered…) this would have been seen as the researchers covering up for the Bush White House until after the election and I am convinced my Iraqi co-investigators would have been killed. Given that Kerry and Bush had the same attitude about invading and similar plans for how to proceed, I never thought it would influence the election and the investigators never discussed it with each other or briefed any political player.
C) if you have information about how and why people in New Orleans were dying today, would you rush to release it? The Falluja downfall happened just one week after the study came out and whether you believe the 500 or the 1600 or the 3600 estimates of associated Iraqi deaths, that alone was probably more than will occur from this moment on due to Katrina.
So, we rushed to get it out, I do not understand why the 'study's scientific neutrality' is influenced or the likelihood that the sample was valid, the analysis fair… What does neutrality mean? Do people who publish about malaria deaths need to be neutral about malaria?
Yours in confusion and disgust,
Les Roberts[21]
On the contrary, Roberts views critics of his study as motivated more by politics than by science; "It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces."[22]