Lies, Damn Lies, And Iraq Statistics

Never underestimate the power of one committed group deciding to lie in unison. Our current media structure can't really handle it well. Karen DeYoung makes a valiant attempt here, by calling this "drop in violence" in Iraq what it is - a lie.

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. "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 [...]

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."

"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."

I think that was probably the point, no? Try to confuse the hell out of everybody with methodologies so that the authoritative military voice couldn't be questioned without some deeper scrutiny. And the public doesn't do scrutiny too well.

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda in Iraq is a figment.

After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq. (In July, for instance, at Charleston Air Force Base, the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times.)

By now, many in Washington have learned to discount the president's rhetorical excesses when it comes to the war. But even some of his harshest critics take at face value the estimates provided by the military about AQI's presence. Politicians of both parties point to such figures when forming their positions on the war. All of the top three Democratic presidential candidates have argued for keeping some American forces in Iraq or the region, citing among other reasons the continued threat from al-Qaeda.

But what if official military estimates about the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq are simply wrong? Indeed, interviews with numerous military and intelligence analysts, both inside and outside of government, suggest that the number of strikes the group has directed represent only a fraction of what official estimates claim. Further, al-Qaeda's presumed role in leading the violence through uniquely devastating attacks that catalyze further unrest may also be overstated.

Remember those few weeks this summer when absolutely everything that happened in Iraq was due to Al Qaeda? That served its purpose; to put this notion of Al Qaeda in Iraq in our collective lizard brains, making it easier for us to work with authoritarian tribal leaders who were killing Americans not so long ago, and who have shown no interest in joining with a rapidly deteriorating central government.

This is where we're actually at with regard to Iraq. More Americans are dying this year, which stands to reason since more of them are there. But the reason for their deployment was to provide security needed for a political resolution, and not only is there no real security, the Iraqi government is on the verge of collapse, according to the Congressional Research Service. We're arming both sides of an ongoing civil war, pissing everyone off by building what looks like permanent power bases where Saddam's palaces used to stand, and creating complete dependence on the US military by allowing a dysfunctional Iraqi security force (they should be disbanded, says the Jones Report) to perpetuate.

Given this reality, Congressional Democrats want to compromise and give Republicans a chance to set a toothless war policy.

Makes sense, don't it?