The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends. Reductions in violence form the centerpiece of the Bush administration's claim that its war strategy is working.
| Therefore any claim of success must be vigorously refuted. |
In congressional testimony Monday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to cite a 75 percent decrease in sectarian attacks.
According to senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad, overall attacks in Iraq were down to 960 a week in August, compared with 1,700 a week in June, and civilian casualties had fallen 17 percent between December 2006 and last month. Unofficial Iraqi figures show a similar decrease.
Still, the WaPo was able to find room for disagreement, in its quest to be fair and balanced.
Others who have looked at the full range of U.S. government statistics on violence, however, accuse the military of cherry-picking positive indicators and caution that the numbers -- most of which are classified -- are often confusing and contradictory.
| "Liars and thieves, the lot of 'em!" |
"Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree," Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq.
| "Really. There are i's that are undotted, t's uncrossed, and big piles of numbers that don't come out identically with other big piles of numbers, some of them random." |
Senior U.S. officers in Baghdad disputed the accuracy and conclusions of the largely negative GAO report, which they said had adopted a flawed counting methodology used by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of those conclusions were also reflected in last month's pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
Oh, so some folks think the violence is less than indicated?
The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."
| "If it went in the side of the head, it was suicide. And if it came straight down, into the top of the head and out the feet, the victim was smote." |
"Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti."
So some trends are down, compared to last year, when they were all up?
Among the most worrisome trends cited by the NIE was escalating warfare between rival Shiite militias in southern Iraq that has consumed the port city of Basra and resulted last month in the assassination of two southern provincial governors.
| This is known as "red on red," and it's number 26 on the scale of military concerns. To be classified as red on red, the bullet has to enter the forward left quadrant of the head, either directly over or immediately to the left of the eye. |
According to a spokesman for the Baghdad headquarters of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), those attacks are not included in the military's statistics. "Given a lack of capability to accurately track Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, except in certain instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any significant degree."
| "You might say that we don't care enough to track it, because the victims mean nothing to us. Besides, the Brits kept telling us they had everything under control and we should be more like them. That's why I bought his monocle and swagger stick." |
Attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen -- recruited to battle Iraqis allied with al-Qaeda -- are also excluded from the U.S. military's calculation of violence levels.
How about the Police and Iraqi Army 'attacks', are they counted?
| Attacks by allied tribes are known as "blue on green" violence, though sometimes they are referred to as "blue on puce" by the don't-ask-don't-tell community. To be classified as blue-on-green/puce the bullet must enter the head in the forward right quadrant, either directly over or immediately to the right of the eye. In the event of muliple bullet holes, only the second largest is counted, to preserve the grading curve. |
The administration has not given up trying to demonstrate that Iraq is moving toward political reconciliation, neither has the WaPo deviated from its' 'quagmire' meme. Testifying with Petraeus next week, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker is expected to report that top Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders agreed last month to work together on key legislation demanded by Congress.
| He's a liar, of course. Karl Rove is making him say that. You can see the steel bars attached to his lips through the back of his head. |
If all goes as U.S. officials hope, Crocker will also be able to point to a visit today to the Sunni stronghold of Anbar province by ministers in the Shiite-dominated government -- perhaps including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq policy. The ministers plan to hand Anbar's governor $70 million in new development funds, the official said.
| But they probably won't take that bribe. They'll probably all be killed by the Iraqi equivalent of the Minutemen. |
But most of the administration's case will rest on security data, the whole point of the surge according to military, intelligence and diplomatic officials who would not speak on the record before the Petraeus-Crocker testimony. Several Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were offered military statistics during Baghdad visits in August said they had been convinced that Bush's new strategy, and the 162,000 troops carrying it out, has produced enough results to merit more time. |