A lot has been written and said about the loss of American lives in the Iraq war. As of mid-week, the number of U.S. service men and women killed in the war exceeded 1,100.

But not much has been written or said about the loss of Iraqi lives. Our newspaper and TV networks dutifully report the rising U.S. military death toll on a daily basis, but little has been disclosed about the many Iraqis who have been killed.

Until now, that is. A survey of the Iraqi death toll by doctors at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad has produced some truly astonishing numbers, which are detailed on the website of The Lancet medical journal.

The numbers arrived at are, by the researchers' own admission, "of limited precision," in large part because they were gathered by Iraqi doctors, going household to household interviewing Iraqi families.

Still, such research concludes that perhaps as many as 130,000 Iraqis have been killed since the war began 18 months ago.

That's 100,000 deaths more than was projected by U.S. officials before the war began. The study also concludes that a preponderance of Iraqi deaths since the war was declared won more than a year ago by President Bush are a result of coalition air strikes - and that most of those killed were women and children.

There is no way to verify the numbers collected by researchers.

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What Iraqi families tell interviewers could be motivated more by a desire to have coalition forces get out of their country than by what really has happened.

But it seems safe to assume the Iraqi death toll has been far greater than the U.S. death toll, and that many, if not most, of the Iraqis killed were not willing combatants.

So there seems to be more than 130,000 additional reasons for the United States to work toward a viable exit policy with regard to the Iraq war.

Nov. 5, 2004