At the same time, Shiite pilgrims from the south and center of the country were streaming towards Najaf, many on foot, to mark the matyrdom of one of their sect's holiest figures, the Imam Ali.

"We expect that close to a million people will enter the city tonight and tomorrow morning," said Khaled Jawad, a member of the Imam Ali shrine's administrative committee.

Security measures are intense, however, with only specially licensed cars allowed into the city center where the golden-domed shrine of Imam Ali is located.

In the past Sunni militants have targeted these Shiite occasions as part of the sectarian dirty war roiling Iraq's mixed central regions.

Most people had already fled the Shiite village of Saifiyah in a mainly Sunni area just south of Baghdad that has been a frequent target recently of gunmen believed to have links to local Sunni tribes.

Bands of Shiite militiamen arrived from Baghdad a week ago and engaged the tribesmen in a gunbattle that prompted the intervention of US forces.

More than 100,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the past three years as gunmen target civilians from rival communities.

Iraqi police found the corpses of 14 murder victims around Baghdad between dawn on Friday and Saturday, many riddled with bullets and showing signs of torture.

Downstream from the capital, in Suweira village, another four bodies were recovered from the Tigris river, all without heads.

The violence was not restricted to the capital, and just to the north, in the town of Balad, police reported finding their own grim harvest of 26 bodies.

The men had all been kidnapped Saturday morning from a market south of the city. They were taken away, tied up, tortured and shot in the head.

The daily toll of corpses has increased during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in what a US military spokesman called a "tremendous spike" in violence.

Most of the killings have been laid at the feet of Shiite death squads, many linked to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. On Friday the preacher denounced groups carrying out such killings in his name.

Meanwhile, the streets of the old city of Najaf were festooned with black flags and massive black banners marking Imam Ali's death. Tents serving food and drink were being laid out, sponsored by the city's wealthy.

Tents have also been erected to house poorer pilgrims unable to afford the hotels filling up with visitors, many from Iraq's overwhelmingly Shiite neighbor, Iran.

In other Baghdad violence, two car bombs exploded in the city center, setting several vehicles alight and wounding one man.

In the restive southern neighborhood of Abu Chir, five members of a family were wounded when a mortar round crashed into their house.

In Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, the Iraqi army reported that six gunmen and a female bystander were killed during a clash with US and Iraqi forces southwest of the provincial capital of Baquba.

Two civilians were also killed by gunmen in Baquba itself, and a shopkeeper was shot dead in the central city of Samarra.

Gunmen killed a teacher in the southern city of Diwaniyah in a drive-by shooting, said police, adding that they did not know why the victim was targeted.

Revenge was the apparent motive when a Baathist official with the former regime of Saddam Hussein was dragged by gunmen from his house in the southern city of Amara. His body was later found near the bus station, police said.

Police in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, meanwhile, reported clashes between the army and militants resulting in the deaths of two gunmen, as well as a joint US-Iraqi raid that netted 10 suspects and a quantity of weapons.

The highly respected Vietnam veteran, who retired last year, said he had apologised to national police chief Mick Keelty for criticising his comments that the Iraq war had inspired the 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid.

"Things have moved on. I have got no reason to argue the weighty assessments that I am seeing," Cosgrove said.

The Australian government of Prime Minister John Howard, a close ally of Washington, contributed troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and maintains a force of some 1,300 involved in Iraqi operations.

Britain's army chief, General Richard Dannatt, said in an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper Friday that British troops in Iraq should pull out soon.

"I don't say the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them," he said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair played down the comments, saying Dannatt was not calling for an immediate withdrawal.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer echoed Blair's remarks in an interview on Australian television Sunday.

"In terms of pulling out of Iraq, I don't think the British general was saying that British troops should immediately withdraw," Downer told Network Ten.

"But if the proposition here is that foreign troops eventually should withdraw from Iraq, everybody agrees with that.

"Nobody wants to stay in Iraq for one minute longer than is necessary and the definition of necessary is whether the Iraqi regime can survive without the support of some foreign troops," he said.

Opposition Labor Party leader Kim Beazley said Cosgrove's comments supported Labor's opposition to the war and called for Australian troops to be withdrawn.

"General Cosgrove, Commissioner Keelty and many others, including the chief of the British defence forces, now make the point that the war in Iraq has made us less safe in the struggle with fundamentalist terror," he told reporters.

"It's something the Labor Party said was the likely outcome of that war for a very long period of time, and John Howard owes the Australian people an explanation for what he's done.

"Better still, he owes the Australian defence forces and the rest of us a withdrawal from the situation in Iraq and a concentration on our region."

According to the UK government's own record of export licences, between January and March this year ministers approved the sale to China of military aero-engines, military communciations equipment and 'technology to build combat aircraft'. It also sold Beijing gun mountings and components for military vehicles, and 'components for nuclear reactors'.

The EU embargo prohibits countries from selling 'whole' weapons such as missile and aircraft, although it does allow the sale of parts.

Other countries whose human rights records concern the Foreign Office, but which still receive arms exports from the UK, include Colombia, Saudi Arabia and Russia, where more than £40m of military equipment was exported last year. On Russia, the Foreign Office report stated: 'Human rights defenders continue to be gravely concerned by actions taken by authorities... The North Caucasus... remains one of Europe's most serious human rights issues.' Yet last year ministers authorised export licences to Russia worth £10m. These included military cargo and utility vehicles, sniper rifles, gun silencers, shotguns, and components for military aircraft navigation equipment.

The analysis of military exports was carried out by Saferworld, the human rights campaign group. Claire Hickson, Saferworld's head of communications, said: 'This once again highlights the incoherence of UK policy which could result in British military equipment being used to commit human rights abuses abroad.'

At the launch of the Human Rights Report, Beckett said: 'This report would set down what we were doing to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms around the world. And it would be something by which the public, the NGO community and the media could hold us as a government to account.'

But Saferworld responded: 'The UK government does little to check what happens to arms exports once they leave the country. There is little way of knowing whether the arms find their way to other users, such as criminal gangs, pariah states, terrorists, paramilitaries or warlords or other rebel forces. A number of these states have reputations as conduits of arms to other irresponsible parties.'

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said that all military exports were rigorously scrutinised on a 'case by case basis' and the British government needs to be reassured that such sales would not be used for internal repression or external aggression.

The Human Rights Report was first published in 1998 by former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who wanted to promote human rights overseas in line with the new Labour government's 'ethical foreign policy'.

The study concluded with a 95 percent degree of certainty that the number of "excess deaths" in Iraq since the invasion-the number of people who have died in excess of the number that would be expected on the basis of pre-invasion mortality rates-is between 393,000 and 943,000. The figure of 655,000 is given as the most likely number. This represents an astonishing 2.5 percent of the entire Iraqi population.

The researchers further estimated that about 600,000 of the deaths were due to violence in some form, including gunshots, air strikes and bombings. They concluded that US and allied military forces directly caused at least 31 percent-or 186,000-of the violent deaths.

Some 336,000 people, or 56 percent of those killed in violent actions since the invasion, died from gunshot wounds. The study also found that the number of violent deaths in Iraq has steadily increased every year since the invasion. In the period from June 2005 to June 2006, the researchers found a nearly four-fold increase in the mortality rate relative to pre-invasion levels.

There can be no legitimate doubts about the credibility of the study. Lancet is one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical publications in the world. The Johns Hopkins public health school is the largest in the world, and regularly ranks as the top public health school in the United States. The journal article was reviewed and approved for publication by four independent scientific experts in the area.

It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the report, even if one assumes its low-end estimate of 393,000 Iraqi deaths to be correct. It demonstrates that the American intervention in Iraq has produced a social and humanitarian catastrophe of historical dimensions, with vast political implications not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world and, above all, in the United States itself.

By any objective standard, the report merits front-page coverage in every major newspaper in the country and extensive discussion and reporting on television news broadcasts. Yet the response of the US press has been to virtually ignore the report and limit its coverage to news accounts on inside pages which report, uncritically, unsubstantiated statements by government and military officials dismissing the report as "not credible."

In burying the story, the New York Times and Washington Post have played a particularly significant role. The original articles published by these newspapers on Wednesday were relegated to the inside pages: in the Times on page 8, in the Post on page 12.

The Post decided to bury the story in its back pages despite the fact that the article it published vouched for the scientific validity the Johns Hopkins study, noting that it, and an earlier report on Iraqi deaths published by the same team, "are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods." The "cluster sampling" technique used by the scientists, the newspaper wrote, "is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters."

Minimal coverage in the press continued on Thursday, despite the fact that the issue was raised by a reporter at a White House press conference on Wednesday. President Bush contemptuously dismissed the report, stating that it was not credible. He was not challenged and the question was not followed up by any of the other reporters at the news conference.

Bush's remarks were followed by statements from various supporters and architects of the war similarly dismissing the Johns Hopkins study's casualty figures. General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, admitted that he had not bothered to read the report, but nevertheless concluded that it did not have "much credibility at all."

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the figure of 655,000 killed is "not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate." Iraqi government officials likewise declared that the figure was "exaggerated."

On Thursday, neither the Times nor the Post published an editorial on the Johns Hopkins report, or even a follow-up article on the report and the response of the Bush administration.

There was not one challenge in the establishment media to the official attempts to disparage the report. Instead, the minimal coverage on Thursday was largely devoted to reporting the statements by Bush, Casey, Blair and the Iraqi stooge regime. The Los Angeles Times, for example, published a story on its inside pages, "Iraq Disputes Claim of 600,000 War Dead," reporting the statements by the Iraqi government. The newspaper added its voice to the chorus by remarking that it had conducted its own survey and reached a figure of 50,000 killed.

The attempts to discredit the report are not backed up by any factual or methodological arguments. The administration and its supporters assume, correctly, that they can simply make unsubstantiated claims and the media will not challenge them.

Lee Roberts, a co-author of the study, noted in an interview with the radio program Democracy Now! on Thursday that the cluster survey approach the researchers used "is the standard way of measuring mortality in very poor countries where the government isn't very functional or in times of war." He pointed out that both the United Nations and the US government have used the method in determining mortality, including after the Kosovo and Afghan wars. "Most ironically," he said, "the US government has been spending millions of dollars per year... to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters."

With its silence, the media is once again taking its cue from the government. It does not challenge Bush's ignorant and cold-blooded dismissal of the Johns Hopkins report, just as it did not challenge Bush's offhand remark at a December, 2005 press conference that 30,000 Iraqis, "more or less," had been killed since the March, 2003 US invasion-an absurdly low estimate.

The corporate-owned-and-controlled media have buried this story because they do not want the American people to know the truth of what is happening in Iraq.

They want to conceal this truth-as they have done consistently since the war began-because they are complicit in a massive war crime in Iraq, and continue to support the bloodletting by the US military.

The Johns Hopkins report, by revealing the colossal dimensions of the death and destruction wreaked by the United States in Iraq, shatters the edifice of lies that has been erected in an attempt to deceive the people and justify the war-from the phony claims of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, to the current claims of a war for "freedom and democracy" and the overarching deception of the "war on terrorism."

The report inevitably highlights the culpability of the media itself, which has combined an acceptance of unprecedented censorship by the military with self-censorship and deliberate misinformation in order to whitewash an imperialist war for oil and geo-strategic domination of the Middle East.

The scale of mass killing revealed in the Johns Hopkins study published by the Lancet stands as an indictment of the entire American ruling elite, both of its political parties-Democratic no less than Republican-and all of its official institutions, among which the media has played a particularly sordid role.

What the corporate, political and media establishment fear are the explosive social and political implications of growing popular revulsion over the crimes of US imperialism in Iraq and around the world, combined with mounting anger over relentless attacks on working people's social conditions and democratic rights. The entire political system is being exposed and discredited before the eyes of the people. Such a process inevitably brings with it revolutionary consequences.

However there was widespread backing across the Army yesterday as soldiers of every rank praised General Dannatt for standing up to the Government.

Within hours of his comments being made public, the Army's unofficial website was packed with hundreds of blogs from troops voicing their support. The messages included: "Can Tony Blair recover from this and justify British presence in Iraq, without using the words 'I was wrong ...?'" Another said: "Dannatt gets my vote! Anyone care to disagree with him? We were lied to when it all started and we are still lied to today!"

Other serving soldiers were also quick to voice their relief at the general's intervention.

One senior officer said: "It has been decades since someone senior actually stood up for us, the soldiers and their families.

"People need to take him seriously. This is not a man who is thinking about his career. This is a man who passionately and clearly believes he should tell the truth and represent all of us."

Last night the Prime Minister tried to minimise the damage, saying he had agreed with General Dannatt's later remarks in a series of "clarifying" interviews. Mr Blair said: "I have to say, I've read his transcript of his interview on the radio this morning, and I agree with every word of it."

As the Government launched a damage-limitation exercise, General Dannatt attempted to clarify his comments. Interviewed on the BBC's Today programme, he said: "I've got an army to look after which is going to be successful in current operations. But I want an army in five years' time and 10 years' time. Don't let's break it on this one. Let's keep an eye on time."

As General Dannatt insisted that there was no rift with the Government, his soldiers were in no mood to back down. Senior officers said he should be "saluted" for his honesty, and frontline soldiers praised him for "telling it how it is".

A non-commissioned officer said: "He has spoken the truth. I think many people feel that but nobody would say it. I agree we should try and get out as soon as we can. That is not to say we let them fight among themselves, but we have always said we would go when the job was done, and I hope it is sooner rather than later.

In his interview with the Daily Mail, General Dannatt said we should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates security problems".

He also suggested that the Government's aim of creating a liberal democracy in Iraq was "naive" and should be scaled down. Britain had "effectively kicked the door in" when troops entered in 2003, he added.

"Whatever consent we may have had in the first place, may have turned to tolerance and has largely turned to intolerance," he said. "I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them."

He said the effects of the conflict could be felt in Britain, where there was a "moral compass spinning" and the Islamist threat had to be faced up to.

White House officials made a series of calls to clarify the comments. President George Bush's spokesman, Tony Snow, said: "We did call [Downing Street] and say, what did he say? We've received transcripts, especially of this morning's interviews.

"What he said is that the comment was taken out of context, and his general point was that when your work is done, you hand over authority to the Iraqis."

He added: "His general argument is, number one, there's no difference between him and the Blair government or between the Brits and the United States. Number two, this is not an injunction to leave, that somehow everything is getting worse."

General Dannatt earlier issued a clarifying statement, saying Britain would stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the Americans adding: "I'm a soldier. We don't do surrender. We don't pull down white flags."

Mr Blair will face a fresh challenge in the Commons next week over Iraq, following the general's intervention. The Commons Select Committee on Defence, which highlighted the threat to morale in Iraq last July, will publish the Government's response. They are expected to summon General Dannatt to expand on his concerns.

The Prime Minister's growing number of critics will be emboldened by the challenge to his authority by the general. Mr Blair's allies are worried where the next challenge will come from. "It's the end of an era," said one minister.

Reg Keys, whose son Thomas was killed in Iraq along with five fellow Royal Military Police officers in 2003, said he agreed "100 per cent" with the general.

Mr Keys said: "He is a strong character who is prepared to speak his mind and not be a spin doctor for the Prime Minister."

However the Tory former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said Sir Richard had not been "playing politics" but should be sacked if he strayed into politics again. He said: "These are perfectly legitimate views for the rest of the nation but serving officers are not, I'm afraid, able to have that kind of freedom."

The SNP's leader, Alex Salmond, told delegates at the party's conference in Perth: "Today the head of the Army - the head of the Army - has said that in his professional opinion our continued presence in Iraq exacerbates the security position in Iraq and elsewhere. Finally the truth."