No Akenaton, there have been two reports the first stating that 500,000 Iraqi civilians MAY HAVE died was published in the British Medical Journal, "The Lancet", in October 2004, whether or not the timing of its release was meant to influence the Presidential Election of that year I do not know. The figures arrived at and how they were ascertained were considered highly suspect at the time.

The second report as you say came out just over a year ago with figures of 650,000 which both the Iraqi Government and Iraq Body Count questioned. The figures given in the first report were attributed to US bombing, in the second they changed tack and put them down to sectarian violence and the actions of insurgents plus US bombing.

Now when you take into account that one week of almost constant carpet bombing of the city of Hamburg during the Second World War with raids involving over one thousand bombers per raid, which caused a firestorm the likes of which have never been seen since. That managed to kill just under 150,000 people. Reporters on the ground in Baghdad reported casualty rates of one tenth those of the bombing campaign that preceded "Desert Storm". Therefore the figures arrived at by the John Hopkins "batch samping" exercise I tend to view with the greatest scepticism.

None of this affects Gorgeous George he just trots out the lie that 650,000 Iraqis have been killed, which equates to about eleven and a half years of his pal Saddam's rule (Saddam ruled for 24).