We Count Everybody But The Dead People

America's rubbing off on Iraq, just look at the Arthur Andersen-style accounting!

U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country's sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

But it eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Not included, for example, are scores of people who died in a highly coordinated bombing that leveled an entire apartment building in eastern Baghdad, a stronghold of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

If this government isn't lying, they're not doing their job. I mean, what else would you call deliberately not counting dead bodies to make the war look better? And that's absolutely the reason:

Within weeks of the kickoff of the Baghdad security plan, the U.S. military's top spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, boasted that the murder rate in Baghdad had fallen by 46 percent and attributed most of the fall to the new security sweeps.

On Thursday, Caldwell revised the figures, posting a statement on the website of the Multi-National Force-Iraq that the murder rate had dropped even more - by 52 percent from July.

That claim was immediately contradicted by the morgue figures, which trickled out in accounts by various news organizations citing unnamed officials.

Damn liberal media! Watching the count and using facts and such! How dare you keep us from winning!

Democrats almost have too many things to talk about coming out of this week. With the deliberate undercount, the Pakistan-Taliban peace treaty, and the bipartisan Senate intel report showing no relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the astonishment just keeps on coming. The Disney movie is background and maybe a deliberate way to change the subject. Let's not let these other scandals fall down the memory hole.