[Aerich]

Well, it's hard to figure out casualty numbers in a war zone, and even harder to attribute deaths to what caused them. There could be just as many deaths from loss of infrastructure (transport of water, food, medical supplies) as there are from bombing. I really don't know.

100 000 seems on the high side. That said, even if it's as "low" as 20 000, that's still a lot of death.

The sample size makes me a little suspicious. 988 households surveyed (according to the article Chewbacca linked to) is actually not that many in a country of however many million people. For argument's sake, say that covers one hundred thousand citizens (100 per household surveyed). What's Iraq's population? 20 million? So the extrapolation is based on a sample size of maybe 0.5%. Moreover, there was actually only 30 locations surveyed. The margin of error for that study is likely quite high.

At any rate, war is nasty, regardless of the actual numbers. Bickering about the numbers is a side topic to the real issue. If American citizens have a problem with the Iraq situation, they should speak with their vote. There's not much that wringing of the hands can do.