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Petraeus: Counting Sectarian Attacks 'Not That Complicated'
As if he read this post, Gen. Petraeus offered his definition of sectarian violence for his tabulations: "acts taken by individual by one ethno-sectarian grouping against another." He added that "it's not that complicated": if "al-Qaeda bombs a Shiite area," it's sectarian violence. Fair enough, but it raises the question: how do you know when a bombing in a certain area is perpetrated by al-Qaeda? Andrew Tilghman documents in the Washington Monthly how MNF-I over-attributes violence in Iraq to al-Qaeda.
One thing that Petraeus specifically denied: a senior intelligence official's claim to the Washington Post that MNF-I tabulates sectarian killings by whether a bullet enters the head through the back or the front.
Comments (61)
busdrivermike wrote on September 10, 2007 5:29 PM:It is way past time to realize that the goals of The US Government in Iraq comes down to this: resource control.
If you have to ask the question "Are we winning" then the answer is no. Everyone knows what winning looks like.
The Bush administration is playing out the clock, so they can hand this tar baby to Hillary.
conniptionfit wrote on September 10, 2007 5:34 PM:Doesn't the 1st Petraeus chart of Iraqi and Bagdad deaths look suspiciously mirrored? It seems odd that the pattern of growth or decrease in deaths is so similar. Does someone with more understanding of statistics and probability than I have an analysis?
md_pallavolo wrote on September 10, 2007 6:21 PM:conniptionfit,
No, it does make sense, but it's more a logic problem than stats/probability. From what we've been told, the surge has focused on security operations in Baghdad, and pretty much left the rest of the country unfettered. This would likely have two implications for these data: 1) the numbers of casualties outside Baghdad should remain relatively constant - i.e., not affected by surge operations, and 2) the numbers of casulaties reported in Baghdad (and the changes thereof) should thus have the strongest impact on changes in the observed total.
Voila! The numbers tend to bear this hypothesis out: If one looks at the difference between the "curves" in the chart, there was a bump in casualties outside Baghdad around May 06, and they have pretty much held constant between 800-1000/month since then (if my data thieving techniques are ballpark correct). The questions I immediately have are: What potentially caused that bump in May? and Is this level of violence outside Baghdad reflective of a stable security situation for the rest of Iraq?
paul wrote on September 10, 2007 6:51 PM:Is there any reason at this point that we should assign more credibility to Petraeus than, say, Ari Fleischer or Alberto Gonzalez?
One of the worst things this administration has done to democracy is to make it a good opening assumption that anything an official government representative says on the record is a lie.
KevinNYC wrote on September 10, 2007 7:11 PM:The bullet in the front/bullet in the back could simply be a bitter sarcsam not an actually guideline.
However given that way over 500 Yazidis were killed in a sectarian bombing a month ago, how does that fit with Petraeus's numbers?
paul wrote on September 10, 2007 7:52 PM:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Qahtaniya_bombings
The front/back denial could easily be nitparsing rather than honest denial. From the reports of such things, the obvious sectarian killings include torture and tying up in addition to shooting, stabbing or other methods of killing. So Petraeus might not be lying, just misleading, when he says that the direction of the bullet isn't the only thing his body-counters use.
The thing is, if it's not sectarian violence that's up, in some ways that's even worse. Because all those people are still dead, and if they weren't killed by militias or the ministry of the interior, then they were killed by folks who are even less susceptible to control. It's like saying you're glad the protestants and the catholics aren't shooting each other so much because the loan sharks and the crack dealers, have started an all-out war instead.
Mary Nauman wrote on September 10, 2007 8:45 PM:Notice that he ended his statement, "That's not something I'm aware of." Was he prepared by the same person who prepared Alberto Gonzales?
Fred M. wrote on September 10, 2007 9:07 PM:In light of the overly-optimistic 2004 op-ed that General Petraeus wrote for the Washington Post, I think it is becoming clear that the administration might have known they were the general was a "loyal Bushie" long ago ...
S.G.E.W. wrote on September 10, 2007 10:59 PM:From the Fox website, describing Mr. O'Reilly's newest segment:
"O'Reilly: The Petraeus factor"
Gen. Petraeus is given Mr. O'Reilly's personal tagline, by "Papa Reilly" himself. Does anything more really need to be said?
John W wrote on September 10, 2007 11:51 PM:Paul,
"One of the worst things this administration has done to democracy is to make it a good opening assumption that anything an official government representative says on the record is a lie."
Just for clarification, is it your claim that Bill "didn't inhale" Clinton was known as a truth-teller?
Duckman GR wrote on September 11, 2007 1:31 AM:crickets, loser.
KevinNYC wrote on September 11, 2007 10:39 AM:Fred M, Petraeus was also an ally of Judy Miller in Iraq. She got him to interfere with the wmd hunt because she was covering it.
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