Now we’re getting somewhere. At the National Press Club this morning, Gen. Petraeus for the first time peeled back the curtain behind his questioned methodology for tabulating ethno-sectarian violence. Calling his methodology “pretty logical and rational,” the general said he has a “three-page document” — he read from it at his Press Club podium — that refutes a senior intelligence official who told Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post that Multi-National Force—Iraq doesn’t count front-of-the-head executions as sectarian incidents. “It’s just not true,” Petraeus said. So what is a sectarian murder?
“Civilians who show signs of being blindfolded, tortured or being shot anywhere, and so forth.”
No word on how MNF-I tabulates civilian casualties. (Does it use Iraqi government data? Morgue data?) Also no word on why two of the larger U.S. intelligence agencies, with the largest analytic capability in the intelligence community, reportedly take issue with MNF-I’s stats. So we’ll be filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the methodology document today.
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