Black Box Report

As Mark Twain once said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." The military's numbers purporting a decrease in sectarian violence would be of the third kind:

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.

It's cherry-picking time again!

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.

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.

It's really not all that complicated. See, the amount of violence in Iraq is down, if you don't count all the violence:

The violence numbers do not include: 1) Sunni on Sunni violence. 2) Shi'a on Shi'a violence 3) Car bombs 4) Getting shot in the front of the head.

But violence is down. Trust me.

At first blush, it's easy to dismiss Sunni on Sunni violence and Shi'a on Shi'a violence as just plain old regular crime, unrelated to the rest of the violence in Iraq, and therefore justifiably not included in the military's statistics. But it's this kind of ignorance about the makeup of Islamic sects and their internicine histories that got us into this mess in the first place:

Among the most worrisome trends ... 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. 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....

Hey, we have great numbers now on people being killed for political reasons -- why would we want want to mess them up by including people being killed for political reasons?

And don't even ask about the deaths of 500 Yezidi Iraqis that were killed last month...The Pentagon certinaly didn't. But they're not Muslims, so they don't count.

But those arguments are positively lucid compared to some of the other qualifications of "sectarian violence." Not counting car bombs? That's like counting murder rates in the US but excluding all gun violence. And I had no idea that it was against the rules of engagement for sectarian warfare not to shoot each other in the face. From the WaPo article:

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."

Uh-huh. This is why some people consider the term "military intelligence" to be an oxymoron. But this is what happens when you give someone a test, let them set the standards and then grade themselves:

Not that any of this should be a surprise. When you get someone to rate themselves on how good a job they're doing, and their boss wants to present that to the board as indicative of his performance... well, strangely enough, they're doing great.

But facts don't matter much. What matters is which set of numbers and assessments get repeated more. And odds are high, despite the media doing some pushback, that the White House will be able to push their numbers with greater repetitiveness. Congress will give Bush another 50 billion, and the war will continue.

And so, Gen. Petraeus will do his best Colin Powell impersonation in front of congress and sacrifice his credibility and reputation for the sake of his commander in chief's pet war. Like Petraeus, Colin Powell was once both respected on the left as well as the right and thought of as his own man, immune to the politicization of reality. But with one fateful appearance before the UN, complete with bogus powders and marked up photos of the Winnebagos of Death, Powell cut his own throat. The difference is, Powell was lied to by others in the administration - Petraeus is cooking the books of his own free will:

They're making up standards as they go along, in the hopes they can keep the charade up just long enough to fool policy makers....

But as the administration's need for some kind of public relations boost became more desperate, so, too, did the administration's willingness to play fast and loose with the numbers.

There are some statistics that are immune, however, from administration finagling:

Frank de Libero put together the chart you see reproduced above. It compared GI deaths in Iraq in any given month of 2007 to the deaths in the corresponding month in 2006. In summary, January '07 was deadlier than January '06. February '07 was deadlier than February '06. March '07 was deadlier than March '06. April '07 was deadlier than April '06. May '07 was deadlier than May '06. June '07 was deadlier than June '06. July '07 was deadlier than July '06. And August '07 was, well, deadlier than August '06.

That shouldn't come as a surprise, as the "surge" strategy specifically contemplated risking higher American death rates (and having Americans kill more people) in order to accomplish some larger political goals. Unfortunately, those goals weren't achieved so we just have more dead people.

But again, as long as you don't count all the violence, then violence is down. And that's the way Bush and Petraeus are going to play it.

Unfortunately, there will be some people counting ALL the violence - the familes of the dead.

I'm sure the military's statistics will be very comforting to them.

Can you win a debate even if you don't show up? Fred Thompson made his official entrance in the '08 race last night, but ducked out on the televised New Hampshire debate with his fellow Republicans. Conservative blogger and Mitt Romney man-crush victim Hugh Hewitt thinks this just shows ol' Fred doesn't have what it takes:

Hillary is running as hard as is possible, and she won't be beaten from the couch on the set of the Tonight Show… Skipping (the) FOX debate is just another indication that Team Thompson hasn't figured out the dynamics of '08 yet. Running a Rose Garden campaign when you don't own the Rose Garden is a sure way to signal an indifference to the realities of the long campaign ahead, and naiveté about the Clintons.

But like the empty seat for Elijah at a Seder dinner, Fred Thompson's absence created perhaps as much of a stir as if he were there:

They're spending a tenth of the debate, debating Fred Thompson. Who says that Fred can't dominate a debate which he doesn't attend?

Given his previous lackluster speeches and his tendency to be a little too casual when suggesting, say, invading Iran would be a good thing, it's hard to argue that Fred didn't get more bang for his buck in the controlled evironments of his TV ad and Jay Leno's couch:

It might seem arrogant of Thompson to avoid the debate, run an ad just before it began, and announce his candidacy on Leno just minutes afterward...Yet Thompson may have still done better than any of the other eight candidates — by attrition, anyway. None of the others really gained from participating…Had Thompson shown up, potentially ill-prepared and at the last minute, he could have done just as badly as they did — or worse, which would have killed his candidacy.

In any other year, waiting until Labor Day to announce your candidacy, much less begin debating in earnest, might be a problem. but in this, the longest campaign season ever, ol' Fred's slow pace might actually be good for him:

There are now so many debates between the two parties that it’s coming close to where networks may well simply want to allot time for weekly series. And while debates are watched by many Americans, and scrutinized by the press and webloggers, the impact of an individual debate is not quite what it used to be. So Thompson will take some heat for skipping the debate and be the subject of a few jokes but is unlikely to lose many votes due to it.

Not everyone agrees, however. Red State says ol' Fred can't hide forever:

I have to think that Fred Thompson was a loser with the people who watched this - unavoidably, perhaps, but we need to get him out there and see what he's made of in these things. Fred needs less tell and more show.

It's time to face the music Fred. The other candidates have all worked up a sweat. It's time for you to put on your Guccis and dance.