It was a belated admission. In a speech in Philadelphia on Monday, George Bush finally put a figure on the number of people killed in Iraq: 30,000. Since the US-led invasion, Bush said that "30,000 have died, more or less", a toll that includes both Iraq civilians and US troops. But is he right? At first glance the Commander-in-Chief's figure seems a bit on the low side. According to another survey last year, for the respected medical journal the Lancet, the real death toll is more like 100,000. Researchers arrived at the figure by comparing death rates in 1,000 Iraqi households before and after the war.

Other non-governmental organisations, though, suggest that Bush may have got it right. An independent watchdog group, Iraq Body Count, estimates that up to 30,892 Iraqis have died, a figure based on media reports. In reality, though, only a fool would attach much credibility to any definite statistic. Iraq is currently the most lawless place on earth. There are so many dead people - blown up by car bombs, killed in sectarian feuds, or shot by the coalition - that any daily figure is categorically unknowable.

In September last year, I arrived at Baghdad's Al-Karkh police station, soon after a car bomb had gone off. It had exploded next to a queue of police recruits. There was a large hole in the road. I asked Allah Hamas, a falafel-stall owner who survived, how many people were dead. "I saw 30 bodies," he said. This was, we agreed, a bit of a guess. Flesh hung from the trees; on the roof of an adjacent shopping arcade an Iraqi policeman noticed the top of someone's head. He lowered it gingerly with a stick. Under these circumstances, the methodology of conventional death no longer applies.

Even Baghdad's morgue provides few clues. Every few minutes a police pick-up truck rolls up with the latest bloodied victim; not all of the dead, though, make it this far. Perhaps Bush would do better simply to admit that "many many thousands" have been killed, and leave it at that.