we don't do body counts

But though we do not count, we can be sure that Saddam killed more than we did, or would have done had we not killed him first.

A good new report by Landmine Action looks at the attempts of the Bliar government to make sure no-one else's counting of Iraqi deaths was taken seriously. Because we also knew, without counting, that however many deaths we caused, they could not be excessive 'in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated'. That advantage was just too greedily anticipated - too great to be exceeded.

The basic obligations under international humanitarian law as regards civilian casualties in an armed conflict are set out in Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions [...] In particular, indiscriminate attacks are prohibited, and this includes any "attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated".

This obligation under international humanitarian law has been fully complied with by the United Kingdom in respect of all military operations in Iraq.
[…]
In many cases it would be impossible to make a reliably accurate assessment either of the civilian casualties resulting from any particular attacks or of the overall civilian casualties of a conflict. This is particularly true in the conditions that exist in Iraq.

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw 17 November, 2004 (Hansard)

A few interesting selections from the report follow. Mostly the authors, dates, even details like departments or individuals copied in have been redacted out. We would not want the people knowing what the people's representatives are saying.

Part of inter-ministerial email correspondence leading the 17 November 2004 House of Commons and Lords statements about the Lancet study:

I’m still worried about where we may be heading. Obviously if the estimate of 100,000 is wrong, we must make that clear. But for every flaw identified, there is testament to the study’s sound methodology. The Economist quoted Scott Zeger, head of department of biostatistics at John Hopkins that the clustered sampling is the rule in public health studies. Death by epidemic also varies by location. If this is how these people usually calculate the effects of epidemics, we need to be careful about criticising it, especially when we have made no attempt of our own to make an estimate – a very major weakness. And I still suspect someone somewhere either has a rough estimate, or the means to pull one together from different pieces of evidence and reporting. If it one day emerges under FAC questioning for example, thayt [sic] someone in the Mod or FCO though [sic] the number were higher than we’ve acknowledged, we would deservedly face public criticism.

From the inter-ministerial email correspondence leading to the 17 November 2004 parliamentary statements about the Lancet study

[O]ne official (name and ministry withheld) referred to a poll undertaken by the International Republican Institute. The IRI found that 22% of 2000 respondents said that in the past year and a half their household had “been directly affected by violence in terms of deaths, handicap or significant monetary loss”. Another official (name and ministry withheld) responded by arguing that “The IRI survey seems to me to harm our argument rather than help, but it is certainly useful to know.” Another official in an email on 9 November likewise wrote that “22% of 30 million is rather a lot of people so this may back up the Lancet’s claim, or be seen to?” In line with a desire only to muster evidence that questioned the 2004 Lancet study estimation of 98,000 deaths, it has not been possible to find the IRI’s findings in any subsequent government statements.

A ‘Restricted’ letter from a ministry’s Chief Economist dated 8 November 2004:

It might also be possible, as Gerald Russell has suggested, to try and validate the study’s preinvasion estimate of mortality by checking it against unpublished MoH health figures. But there is (a) no certainty at this stage that this kind of work would invalidate the Lancet findings, or (b) any guarantee that if it does produce a difference answer, that the rejection of the Lancet findings would be conclusive.

An FCO letter sent to 10 Downing Street on 14 October 2004:

We should be wary of being caught in a public debate over which of these figures are accurate. We should also be wary of being drawn into giving an estimate of the numbers killed by MNF and Iraqi forces as against those killed by insurgents. If we are able to give the ones, pressure will build to release the others.
[…]
The US have, like ourselves, stuck to the line that there are no comprehensive figures for civilians casualties and do not comment on suggested figures. The Embassy in Washington has asked for the US’s official estimate of civilian casualties in Iraq. We still await the responses from the State Department and Department of Defense.

In sum, if we produce a figure that differs from the Iraqi government figures, we will have to defend it – and the way it was arrived at – before parliament and the media. [redacted] We recommend that for the moment we continue to put our public emphasis on specific atrocities against civilians, such as the mass killing of Iraqi children in Baghdad on 30 September, and their attempts to thwart our efforts to stand up independent Iraqi security forces.

On 5 December an FCO official commented:

There is intense FOI and parliamentary interest in this – if we started using figures internally now as a measurement of progress, we would risk having to release them under an FOI request, which would contradict previous statements that we do not collate or endorse any casualty figures.

Well at least you avoided that one.