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As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Thursday, September 07, 2006

The Accountability Dance

Last week, you heard a brief bit of crowing from Bush defenders and even Administration officials that the crackdown on Baghdad appeared to be working, and this was proof that the "adapting to win" strategy in Iraq was working. Now, whenever things go badly there, a Bush defender will say something like "you can't look at the events on the ground NOW, history will judge," which I consider a "get out of accountability, free" card. As soon as there was any good news, however, history ceased to judge, and the two-week sample rate was enough to proudly boast "We're winning." Except when that sample rate is fudged:

It looks like they spoke too soon. According to the ABC News blog, the Baghdad morgue today revised its figures upward a whopping 300 percent:

"It turns out the official toll of violent deaths in August was just revised upwards to 1535 from 550, tripling the total. Now, we’re depressingly used to hearing about deaths here, so much so that the numbers can be numbing. But this means that a much-publicized drop-off in violence in August - heralded by both the Iraqi government and the US military as a sign that a new security effort in Baghdad was working - apparently didn’t exist. […] Violent deaths now appear roughly in line with the earlier trend: 1855 in July and 1595 in June."


Now, I'm sure, we'll go back to the "history will judge" argument. Anything to remove accountability for this disastrous foreign policy mistake.

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