The Lie Before the Lie

TPM's John Marshall has a wonderful essay regarding recent Iraq War "body count" figures that the White House and the military are throwing at us in advance of the so-called "Petraeus Report" being released later this month. Here is a snippet, but it is worth reading in its entirety. We are being lied to, about the deaths of Americans and Iraqis alike, in order to facilitate a position that the President has no intention of changing one way or another.

It's sometimes fun to wonder whether, knowing all we know today, we'd fall for another version of the Iraq/WMD bamboozle if another came down the pike. I'm afraid the answer has to be: absolutely.

Look no further than the present debate about the success of the 'surge'. I think Karen DeYoung's piece in today's Post -- regrettably on A16 -- settles once and for all that the numbers we're hearing are basically a scam.

It's worth beginning by noting what appears to be the universal consensus that the strategic aim of the surge -- political reconciliation -- has been a complete flop. No progress and things have gotten much worse. That leaves a debate about tactical successes, which for better or worse, we're judging by various body counts. As I've struggled to get my head around this discussion I've looked -- mainly in vain -- for numbers going back some period of time with a consistent methodology since an apples to apples comparison over some period of time is the only way to make any sort of reliable judgments about change, improvement or decline.

What comes up again and again though is one basic disconnect -- the military command in Baghdad says civilian casualties have dropped dramatically. Independent press tabulations say the numbers are high and getting higher.

DeYoung's article gives us a couple bits of information that help us start to unravel the mystery. First, the military command in Baghdad is in a spat with the GAO, which the generals accuse of using a flawed methodology. (GAO's analysis basically disagreed with them on all particulars.) DeYoung's piece includes the very telling detail that the GAO is using the same methodology that the CIA and the DIA favor. So it would seem that it's not only a question of the government versus outside observers. The military command in Baghdad sounds like it's completely isolated even within the US government on how to compute the numbers.

6 September 2007