If, God forbid, Flyer News is your only source of news, you might have missed the recent report on the number of deaths in Iraq as a result of the U.S.-led invasion.

According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 655,000 Iraqis have died since March 2003 who would not have died if not for the invasion. That's 14,886 every month, or nearly 500 every day.

This news was a huge shock to many, since George W. Bush's estimate last December was 30,000 and Iraq Body Count sets the number between 44,000 and 49,000. Iraq Body Count thus believes there have been 1,022 deaths per month, or roughly 34 each day.

The huge difference in estimates stems from a different set of methods. While the U.S. government and Iraq Body Count add up the deaths announced by the media, the Johns Hopkins researchers held interviews with Iraqi families, and extrapolated the results for the entire population.

The interviews took place across the country, and nearly 80% of deaths cited by Iraqi families were accompanied by death certificates to prove it.

The methodology has been questioned by some, but the researchers at Johns Hopkins said they may have underestimated. They refer to 'survivor bias,' or the fact that if an entire family was killed, they could not be accounted for in the survey.

George W. Bush, meanwhile, said, 'I stand by the figure that a lot of innocent people have lost their life,' BBC News says. 'A lot' is, incidentally, not a figure, but Bush continued, 'Six-hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just ' it's not credible.'

The real problem here is that there is nothing to do but guess. All three of the research groups involved'the Department of Defense, Iraq Body Count and the Johns Hopkins researchers'are hindered by the fact that reliable data is impossible to access in Iraq.

Due to sectarian violence in Iraq, researchers are in constant danger, and counting every body is impossible. 'Reliable data is very hard to obtain in Iraq, where anti-US insurgents and sectarian death squads pose a grave danger to civilian researchers,' BBC News says.

Whatever the number is, the fact that thorough research is impossible should discourage and disappoint us.

The war in Iraq is often applauded for bringing freedom to Iraqis after a long oppression under Saddam Hussein. I have no doubt Hussein was oppressive, but how free are Iraqis now?

If a group of unarmed university researchers is in danger while counting bodies, can we really imagine Iraqis are free to do what they please? They can elect a government, but can they go outside without fear of being killed?

At some point, the U.S. and Iraqi governments need to recognize that they are losing the new war in Iraq. Instead of bickering about the number dead, Bush needs to find a way to stop Iraqis from joining the new internal conflict between Sunnis and Shias. I stand by the figure that very little time is left in Iraq.