Last month there was a little bit of hubbub -- mainly in the form of repudiation by American and Iraqi officials -- over Burnham et al's estimate that on the order of 600,000 violent deaths had occurred since the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. At the time, the official American tally of Iraqi deaths came in at about 30,000, with the Iraqis saying something similar.
Yesterday, Health Minister Ali al-Shemari posited a civilian death toll of 150,000. This value is apparently based on an attempted total count of civilian and police dead, including people who were abducted and later found dead. al-Shemari still denies that 600,000 is a credible figure. Note, however, that due to the nature of the Burnham study's estimation technique, the full range of possible values is 393,000 to 942,000. Also consider that Burnham did not try to distinguish between people killed while fighting as insurgents, and those killed as civilians.
And also consider that a family will notice when someone goes missing, but the Health Minister's tally requires a body.
All things considered, the Burnham estimate is still quite solid, especially given the tendency of morgue and other government-based reporting methods to underreport civilian deaths in wartime.