A couple of observations for you Big Phil

1) Absolutely amazing what two wars, umpteen bombing campaigns, a decade of inhuman sanctions (that supposedly took the lives of 500,000 children under the age of five), arbitrary violence on the part of the US (which has supposedly killed 650,000 Iraqi civilians), unbridled sectarian mayhem, a civil insurrection and mass evacuation of the country can do for your population figures.

2) So how come their rate of population growth compared to the UK's is damn near 10:1.

How about this by way of explanation:

A) Nowhere remotely near the "projected" 500,000 children under five died due to UN sanctions.

B) Nowhere remotely near the "batch sampled" 650,000 Iraqi "civilians" were killed by US bombers

C) The 4.5 million Iraqi's who had fled the regime of Saddam Hussein returned.

Hell dianavan if you want manipulated figures there's the population of Iraq in 1990 (18.6 million) instantly raised to 24.25 million at a stroke. (Population of Iraq July 2003 after the fall of Saddam was 24,683,313). I'm not saying that that is so, too damn pat by half, but it serves as a reasonable indication.

As for the level they were trying to get back to Big Phil, it is a damn sight more likely that they were attempting to replace those lost earlier in the Iran/Iraq War and those killed by Saddam.