Have 655,000 civilians really died in Iraq? Or is the real number less than one-tenth that amount? Is the situation in Iraq well in hand, or has Bush botched the war so badly with no hope of setting it right, that putting Saddam Hussein back in power is actually starting to look like a palatable alternative?

Naturally, conservatives cling to the much lower numbers, as they make similarly unsubstantiated claims that Saddam Hussein probably killed hundreds of thousands of people and disappeared them. The new survey, carried out by researchers at Johns Hopkins and reviewed by The Lancet, a credible and very well-established journal, has been called untrustworthy–but only by people with a political bias, and never for reasons that hold up well under scrutiny (if any rationale is even given in the first place). The survey says that the total numbers could range anywhere between 420,000 and 790,000 deaths, but that the higher numbers are more likely closer to reality.

While the Iraq Body Count web site estimates around 45,000 civilian deaths so far, it is restricting its count to “civilian deaths that have been reported by recognized sources,” which means that they wait until any death is reported by “two or more independent approved news sources.” Naturally, this will leave an enormous number of civilian deaths unreported.

Bush claimed that the Hopkins estimate was “pretty well discredited,” but that claim in itself is highly questionable. Most who make that accusation claim the survey’s methodology is discredited, but like Bush, they give no details on how it was discredited, or by whom. The most coherent argument came from the Iraq Body Count (IBC) site, which claims that such high numbers would mean that there is a massive conspiracy underway in Iraq to hide civilian deaths from the media–but give no supporting data to back this up, not even a brief explanation.

The claims of the Hopkins study being “discredited” is probably mostly just a casual comparison with the IBC numbers, with the right-wing observers choosing which study to discount based upon what they want to see rather than the actual methodologies.

The IBC methodology, which counts less than 10% of the numbers found in the Johns Hopkins study, is, according to IBC itself, a “conservative” measure of deaths (in the statistical sense, not the political sense–though that works here, too). They themselves have said that “our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or recording .” The Media Lens web site has an extensive, two-part report on how the IBC is missing the mark by a far wider amount than they claim. Among the reasons: IBC ignores all non-English media reports, in particular Arabic sources, which do a far better job of counting casualties than the English-language media; it ignores all deaths not widely reported; it does not account for reporting bias by news agencies in favor of covering “good news”; and it strongly undercounts deaths by helicopter attack, unmanned drones, and tank fire. There’s a lot more, but it is pretty clear that the IBC methodology can be very strongly discredited.

The Johns Hopkins study, on the other hand, relies on what is called the “cluster sample survey” technique, where 12,801 Iraqis were surveyed in representative groups, the results of the survey extrapolated for the whole population. This technique is commonly used, and is considered accurate (where it does not step on any political toes, that is). It is probably the most accurate counting technique possible for a place like Iraq, where full reporting of events is clearly hindered by the same violence that is being reported on.

Johns Hopkins has an update that reaffirms the original estimate.

So, if we accept the report as accurate, then what’s the conclusion? Simply put, three times as many people are dying now than were dying under Saddam Hussein. Add that to the fact that everything from employment to power, sanitation, and water service are far below pre-war norms, and it paints a pretty grim picture–especially considering that things only stand to get worse.

Conservatives are violently in denial over the numbers for good reason: they don’t like it when the facts bear out that their favorite president is three times as much a bloodier despot than Saddam Hussein himself. When the president’s stewardship over Iraq causes many times the deaths caused under the “Butcher of Baghdad’s” rule, it makes a startlingly coherent case for the sheer catastrophe this president has produced.

This is nothing new; for a long time now, conservatives have been crafting their own reality, their “truthiness” about the state of things in Iraq. They have constantly and persistently painted an unrealistically rosy picture, standing by their fantasy even as one delusional excuse after another got shattered by hard reality. You could even say that the shams started before the war began, with the talk about how we would be greeted as liberators, how our troops would be showered with floral welcomings. After the invasion ended and the insurgency began, there were all kinds of excuses. Those weren’t insurgents, we were told–they were terrorists from outside Iraq; the people there love us, just look at the Kurds. The Kurds in the north were very often brought up whenever conservatives wanted to show how things were going well, as were reports from soldiers from any quiet corner of Iraq that could be located.

Fake news was also a strong component of the shams. That iconic event where the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in the midst of throngs of cheering Iraqis is now burned into our cultural psyche–even though it has long been proven to have been a staged PR event, with the media as willing accomplices. The “throngs” of Iraqis was actually a small gathering that took up only a tiny portion of the public square; the media photographers shot from a low angle to hide the fact. The Iraqis were at least in part ringers–several of them were confirmed as associates of Ahmed Chalabi, the Bush administration’s corrupt despot-to-be at the time. The American flag that got draped over the statue’s head was, by sheer coincidence of course, the same flag that flew over the Pentagon on 9/11. Whaddaya know.

The deniers quickly turned on the media, however, once the media started reporting a little more of the truth; like Reagan in the 80’s, they blamed the messengers for the bad news, saying that there was plenty of good news, it just isn’t being reported. Look at that new school being opened! What about the stadium that just got rebuilt? Look how many neighborhoods have gotten their power and water restored! However, this pipe-dream fantasy slowly got torn down as reality seeped through. The schools were not being reported on because our own military told the reporters not to; if the media reported on a new school opening, it became an instant target and was destroyed. Reporters tried to report on new stadiums and such, but all to often it was far too dangerous to venture out to do that reporting. And it became all to clear over time that public utilities and services were in a disastrous state of disrepair.

The administration even had their own people act as ringers for media reporters, or paid off reporters to cover the news they wanted with the slant they wanted. There was a political office in Baghdad that was charged with sending out rosy media reports during the election year, something the deniers could point to and say, here’s the news that isn’t being reported on.

Politicians and observers tried to use visits to Iraq as credibility for their claims. “I’ve been to Iraq, and things are fine!” we used to hear, and sometimes still do. But then we started finding out that photographs of calm neighborhoods in Iraq that politicians posted on their web sites were actually taken in other countries, and the tours these people were given were through the calmest places–in short, they were patronized while the soldiers babysitting them rolled their eyes and resented the hassle they presented.

When sectarian strife erupted into what many called a “civil war,” the deniers couldn’t have that floating around, so they started parsing words, saying that “civil war” meant something else entirely. They even spread the incredible and fantastic claim that the violence in Iraq was no different than daily life on the streets of many American cities; this reporter sharply cut that statement to shreds.

In contrast to the claims that things are much better in Iraq than we’re hearing in the media, the truth is that things are actually much worse than we’re hearing. Hard to imagine, but the evidence backs it up.

In the end, there is no denying it: Bush’s War in Iraq, like the president himself, is a miserable failure. Now, the knee-jerk right-wing response to that is to create a straw man: “how dare you insult the troops!” (Bill Maher got that response from his wingnut guest just a few days ago.) Of course, observing that the war is a failure does not reflect on the troops; it is a matter of sending them on a mission that is futile and impossible in the first place, a long shot even if the president hadn’t screwed up the war planning and execution in almost any and every way possible. Trying to use the troops as a human shield against criticism is dishonorable and constitutes the basest form of cowardice.

Deny all you want, the truth doesn’t care. Iraq is a failure, and that is clearly evident to anyone who takes an honest, objective look at the immense tide of facts that are available to anyone who wants to see.

Why is this important? Because if one makes plans and executes policies based upon a falsehood, it is bound to create further disaster. That’s why we have to accept information such as the Johns Hopkins study, as sober realities of the war, and proceed intelligently and responsibly.

As if the Bush administration is ever going to do that.