HOW CASUALTY NUMBERS ARE JUGGLED

I have written previously about Hillary's willingness
to stretch the truth at a convention of the pro-war
VFW, by referring to the surge as "working." For
proof she cited Anbar province where Sunni tribal
leaders have turned a majority of the people there
against al Qaeda. That is certainly a welcome turn
of events, but it had nothing to do with the surge.
It started well before the surge, and was caused by
things al Qaeda did, not anything we did. Al Qaeda
brought that reaction on themselves by their
brutality and repression in areas where they had
control. The people rebelled. And good for them!

Sen. Clinton is echoing and thus supporting Mr. B.'s
same erroneous use of progress in Anbar (where
he was today) to prove his claims of success for the
surge. She is not helping get us out of Iraq, as she
claims she wants. She is helping Bush stay in Iraq,
at a most critical and decisive time in the debate.
She must know better. Or maybe not! Either way,
she shows extremely poor judgement.

Paul Krugman in a must-read op-ed ("Snow Job in
the Desert") in the NYT (9/3/07) wrote about Iraq:
"Many news organizations have come out with
misleading reports suggesting a sharp drop in U. S.
casualties." In doing so, they are ignoring seasonal
variations due to the slowing of military activity in
the brutal heat there. There were only 43 KIA in
July last year, vs. 84 this year. That's progress?

P. K. adds: "every month of 2007 has seen more
U. S. fatalities than the same month in 2006."
"What about civilian casualties," asks P. K. "The
Pentagon says they're down, but it has neither
released its numbers nor explained how they are
calculated. According to a draft report from the
Government Accountability Office. . . U. S. gov't
agencies 'differ' on whether sectarian violence has
been reduced. And independent attempts by news
agencies to estimate civilian deaths from news
reports, hospital records, morgs and burials have
not found any significant decline."

There are parts of Baghdad where civilian deaths
are probably down, admits Krugman. But he says
that may just may that ethnic cleansing is complete
in those areas, and there's no one left to kill. Most
of Baghdad's Sunnis are gone. It's pretty much a
Shia city now. There has been no hint of sectarian
reconciliation," he says. (And that was the whole
purpose of the surge.) "And the Iraqi government,
according to another leaked U. S. government report,
is completely riddled with corruption."

As for Gen. Petraeus' rosy reports, Krugman says
of the general, (he). . .is now identified with the surge;
if it fails, he fails. He has every incentive to find a way
to keep it going, in the hope that somehow he can pull
off something he can call success. . . And General
Petraeus's history also suggests that he is much more
of a political, and indeed partisan, animal than his
press would have you believe. In particular, six weeks
before the 2004 presidential election, General
Petraeus published an op-ed in the Washington Post
in which he claimed -- wrongly, of course -- that
there had been 'tangible progess' in Iraq, and that
'momentum has gathered in recent months.' Is it
normal for serving military officers to publish articles
just before an election that clearly help an incumbent's
campaign? I don't think so." P. S. The general later
got his fourth star!

When anyone in the government, including the Gen.
or the Prez refers to numbers that are reported, we
should always be extremely careful to note who is
doing the reporting, and what their criteria are.
This is tricky, according to the Iraq Study Group's
published report on this subject: "There is significant
underreporting (all emphases mine) of the
violence in Iraq. The standard for recording
attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of
reports and databases. A murder of an Iraqi
is not necessarily counted as an attack, that assault
does not make it into the database. (Remember,
this is the I. S. G. report speaking here!) A roadside
bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt
U. S. personnel doesn't count. For example, on one
day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant
acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the
reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts
of violence. Good policy is difficult to make
when information is systematically collected
in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with
policy goals." So says the Iraq Study Group (on
pp. 94,95). We must listen and pay attention when
evaluating reports from the military!


jgoodwin004@centurytel.net