TPMMuckraker

Petraeus: How Many Times Do I Have to Defend My Stats?

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) didn’t have much success in getting Gen. Petraeus to go into more detail about how he’s derived his statistics for civilian casualties and sectarian attacks. Petraeus reminded Smith — who misspoke by claiming Petraeus didn’t present his total-casualty stats — that he’s presented Congress with the statistics that he has. But notice that Petraeus doesn’t answer Smith’s question about how Shiite-on-Shiite attacks or other, murkier “ethno-sectarian violence” (to use the general’s phrase) gets classified.

David Petraeus, Iraq

Editor & Publisher

Josh Marshall

Managing Editor

David Kurtz

Senior Associate Editor

Paul Werdel

Associate Editor

Tom Lane

Assistant Editor

Igor Bobic

Reporters

Brian Beutler

Carl Franzen

Sahil Kapur

Eric Kleefeld

Nick Martin

Evan McMorris-Santoro

Jillian Rayfield

Ryan J. Reilly

Benjy Sarlin

Front Page Editor

David Taintor

News Writers

Kyle Leighton

Pema Levy

Video Editor

Michael Lester

Research Interns

Christopher Hohmuth

Tom Kludt

Publishing Intern

Christopher O’Driscoll

General Manager & General Counsel

Millet Israeli

VP, Ad Sales

Bruce Ellerstein

Waldo Tibbetts

Bob Edmunds

Manager, Ad Operations and Sales Support

Versha Sharma

Deputy Publisher

Callie Schweitzer

Director of Technology

Eric Buth

Designer/Developer

Ni Mu

Matthew Wozniak