In 2004 and then in 2006, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States released details of its comprehensive survey of civilian deaths in Iraq.

It undertook the studies because the Coalition of the Willing which invaded Iraq in March 2003 has consistently refused to accept any obligation for measuring the real cost of its self-proclaimed rescue mission.

The 2004 report, published 18 months after the invasion, found that 100,000 more Iraqis had died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred, that 84% of violent deaths had been caused by the actions of Coalition forces and that 95% of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery.

A further study conducted between May and July in 2006 and reported in the peer-reviewed Lancet found that number had grown to 654,965 more Iraqis dying than would have been expected under pre-war conditions.

These figures have never been disputed by any credible research and have been quietly ignored by the Coalition of the Willing.

They are worth repeating for several reasons.

Firstly, the former 18-year head of the United States Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, in memoirs published this week, stated categorically that the invasion was not about weapons of mass destruction, was not about removing an evil dictator and was not about bringing democracy to the Middle East. The invasion, according to Greenspan, was about oil.

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he said.

When we bemoan increased fuel prices each time we fill up, it would do us all well to remember what the real cost has been.

We should also remember that rare moment of honesty from our government in July when Defence Minister Brendan Nelson admitted in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that oil was a key factor.

Nelson contended for a moment, before he was put firmly in his place by the Prime Minister, that a new defence review had concluded that “resource security’’ in the Middle East was a priority and a reason for our continued presence in Iraq.

Appealing directly to our hip pockets over our humanity, Nelson warned: “Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq.”

The Labor Party made much play of this confusion between Nelson and his superiors, something shadow foreign affairs minister Robert McClelland was still at last week.

Taking a shot at Alexander Downer’s contention in a radio interview that “I think at long last, after a big struggle, real progress is being made on the ground in Iraq and just as we are making progress there”, McClelland went on to detail the number of times the foreign minister had made similar claims since 2004.

The list was a lengthy one.

McClelland then gave the Opposition’s assessment – and it is distressingly weak.

“At least 75,000 and possibly up to 600,000 people are dead. Some two million people have been driven out of Iraq and nearly as many have been internally displaced,” he said.

This would appear to be the Labor Party line, despite the peer-reviewed Johns Hopkins research that put the number of deaths at 100,000 in 2004 and 650,000 by 2006, and despite the shocking civilian death toll since.

After five years of conflict, Australia is being set up, through the continued denial of the real cost, to repeat the mistake of engaging in armed conflict without real and pressing reason.

Despite Mr Rudd, who appears on the cusp of a crushing election victory sometime this year, repeatedly calling for the Prime Minister to debate him in public, he remains a party to that denial.

Why else would his website Kevin07 maintain such a timid position?

Under the heading “It’s time to tell the truth about Iraq”, the Opposition offers this mealy-mouthed assessment:

“By anyone’s measure, the Iraq war has failed – and the fallout has been devastating. Four years after the invasion of Iraq, fighting still rages across the country, weapons of mass destruction remain elusive and terrorism has only escalated.

“According to estimates, the war has killed 71,000 Iraqi civilians (and possibly as many as 600,000) and forced another 2 million to flee their homeland.’’

Memo to Kevin Rudd:

The majority of Australians opposed the war, continue to oppose the war and want our soldiers out of there. If that position on the war’s cost is as brave as you are prepared to be, we are in real trouble.