In the debate over the surge, there have been a number of questions raised within the government about an important metric for understanding whether the U.S. military's strategy is succeeding -- how Multinational Force-Iraq calculates sectarian violence.
Earlier this month, David Walker of the Government Accountability Office testified that he could not "get comfortable" with General David Petraeus' methodology for determining sectarianism, considering it too inferential to be reliable. His report, echoing objections from senior intelligence officials, instead tabulated the pace of attacks on civilians and found the surge didn't appear to have a significant effect on civilian-targeted violence. However, relying on data interpreted through the MNF-I methodology, Petraeus testified that sectarian violence had fallen in Iraq to mid-2006 levels.
The actual methodology MNF-I employs has remained unknown. Until now.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed two weeks ago, MNF-I has provided TPMmuckraker with its criteria for identifying ethnic and sectarian violence. We've added the methodology to our Document Collection, and you can read it here.
While the House Judiciary Committee hearings are in recess, take a look at this great post from Ilan Goldenberg at Democracy Arsenal. Goldenberg combs through the just-released quarterly Pentagon report (pdf) and compares its civilian-casualty numbers (pdf) to those presented last week to Congress by General David Petraeus (also pdf). And sure enough, it appears that the quarterly report's numbers -- which were taken from Multinational Corps-Iraq, the command just under Petraeus' -- make the pre-surge period seem better than Petraeus' numbers; and the surge period seem worse.
Gen. Petraeus downplayed the non-al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency in his testimony and subsequent press appearances. But a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service last week pointed out that al-Qaeda in Iraq is a miniscule fraction of the insurgency. From Kenneth Katzman, the lead Iraq analyst for Congress' independent, nonpartisan research wing, AQI is:
A numerically small but politically significant component is non-Iraqi, mostly in a faction called al-Qaeda Iraq. Increasingly in 2007, U.S. commanders have seemed to equate AQI with the insurgency, even though most of the daily attacks are carried out by Iraqi Sunni insurgents.
Katzman puts AQI's active strength at between 1500 and 3500 fighters. (Terrorism expert Malcolm Nance pegs it at about 1300.) That's compared to about 25,000 Sunni insurgents, according to U.S. estimates, though the Iraqi government puts them at about 40,000, with 150,000 "supporters." AQI certainly punches above its weight class -- Petraeus said it's responsible for today's murder of anti-AQI Sunni shiekh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, though George Washington University professor Marc Lynch thinks Sunni insurgents may have killed him -- but it's important to remember that the insurgency isn't a monolith under the control of al-Qaeda.
One week later, here it is: Gen. Petraeus' definition of sectarian violence.
Ever since the GAO report last week said it was "not clear" that the surge had contributed to a drop in sectarian deaths, Gen. Petraeus has been under pressure to explain his methodology. The GAO was agnostic on whether or not sectarian attacks had declined in recent months, citing that it required knowing a perpetrator's intent -- a task beyond the capabilities of the agency. But GAO was, at least inferentially, skeptical, noting that the broader pattern of attacks on civilians -- of which sectarianism is a proportion -- hasn't declined. And further reporting suggested problems with how MNF-I has tabulated sectarian casualties: one famous Washington Post story cited a senior intelligence official claiming MNF-I looks at where a bullet entered someone's head to divine sectarian intent.
Petraeus has disputed all of this. Yesterday, in Washington, Petraeus took a stab at an explanation. And in Baghdad, the Los Angeles Times reports, so did the U.S. military command, known as Multinational Forces Iraq, to combat the accusation that it's cooking the books to exaggerate the success of the surge. However, it's not exactly clear what that methodology tells us:
Stung by accusations that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, had presented selective statistics during his testimony before Congress, the military released a statement here outlining its definition of sectarian violence: bombings, killings or other attacks committed by an ethnic group or religious sect against another, for purely sectarian purposes.
That seems a little circular. As I wrote last week, determining sectarian killings isn't a matter of determining intent. There's plenty of evidence from a body that a killing was driven by sectarian motivations. Victims of sectarianism "generally are males found without identification documents and shot execution-style. The bodies usually are blindfolded and bound at the wrists, and often bear signs of torture," writes the LAT's Tina Susman. It may be that MNF-I's methodology makes sense, and the GAO was unduly harsh. Or not.
Here's MNF-I's statement in full:
Multi-National Force-Iraq defines ethno-sectarian murder as a murder committed by one ethnic/religious person/group directed at a different ethnic/religious person/group, where the primary motivation for the event is based on ethnicity or religious sect.
Ethno-sectarian violence is defined as an event and any associated civilian deaths caused by or during murders/executions, kidnappings, direct fire, indirect fire, and all types of explosive devices identified as being conducted by one ethnic/religious person/group directed at a different ethnic/religious person/group, where the primary motivation for the event is based on ethnicity or religious sect.
In our collection of data, a shot to the front or back of the head is not used to determine ethno-sectarian murder.
The number of ethno-sectarian murders has declined significantly since the height of the sectarian violence in December 2006. Iraq-wide, the number of ethno-sectarian deaths has decreased by over 55 percent, and it would have decreased much further if it not for the casualties inflicted by barbaric al-Qaeda bombings attempting to reignite sectarian violence.
It remains unclear why, as reported, the GAO, DIA and CIA have difficulty accepting MNF-I's definition of sectarian violence.
Surely this counts as a new land speed record for dropping something down the memory hole.
Tomorrow, President Bush will endorse the Petraeus plan for removing five Army surge brigades by July 2008. He's going to portray that incremental reduction as the spoils of victory. Just yesterday, however, Gen. Petraeus conceded that "the string is going to run out" on the deployments of the surge brigades by the summer, and since the active-duty Army doesn't have any more available brigades to send in relief and the reserve component (the National Guard and Army Reserve) is overtaxed as well, the surge just has to come to an end -- unless the Pentagon is willing to extend active-duty deployments even further, which Secretary Gates pledged in April not to do.
Just don't tell any of that to Tony Snow. "Wrong. You don't have to pull 'em out," Snow said today at the daily press briefing when challenged by a reporter.
Snow tried to portray the reporter's inquiry as an attack on Petraeus' credibility, even though Petraeus himself acknowledged the fact yesterday.
On at least three occasions that I counted during the Petraeus/Crocker hearings, Gen. Petraeus flatly stated that the U.S. is not providing weapons to the Sunni tribal fighters who, over the past year, have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq. On Monday I noted how the U.S. was giving the tribes money that they used to buy weapons, making Petraeus' assurance precious and legalistic.
But it turns out that earlier this year, U.S. commanders weren't so defensive about the terms of their deal with the tribes. Here's Major General Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq, on those terms in June:
[Question] (on camera): Will the assistance or the coordination with these former insurgent groups extend to arming [them] or helping them out in logistics in any sense?
GEN. BENJAMIN MIXON, U.S. REGIONAL COMMANDER IN IRAQ: It certainly will. We have seen this in counterinsurgency operations before, using local nationals, if you will, arming them, forming them into scouts, if you will. And that's the primary role that we want to use them in. They know the territory, they know the enemy.
Gen. Petraeus didn't say that there isn't a non--al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency in Iraq anymore. But he's certainly been at pains to diminish its role. That might have to do with both his campaign plan against that very insurgency -- and a great deal with politics -- but it certainly paints a misleading picture to the public about who it is we're fighting in Iraq.
Today at the Press Club, he very briefly referred to the Sunni insurgency, urging reporters, "don't get me wrong" about its existence. But it would be very easy to get the general wrong, since his description of the ongoing Iraqi Sunni insurgency against the U.S. consigned it to an afterthought compared to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Shiite militias.
But it's the Sunni insurgency, primarily, that's responsible for the approximately 93 soldiers killed on average in Iraq each month this year. "It's not Al Qaeda in Iraq -- they are strictly a [car bomb] and occasional ambush group," says Malcolm Nance, a longtime counterterrorism expert and former adviser to the U.S. military in both Afghanistan and Iraq. "Nope, it's the ex-Ba'athists and Iraqi religious extremists."
It's all over but the arguing. In a few days, Gen. Petraeus will be back at Camp Victory and Amb. Crocker will be back in the Green Zone. The next comprehensive official assessment of Iraq's political and military fortunes will come in March 2008, when Petraeus will decide when and if to schedule further reductions below the pre-surge force of roughly 130,000 troops.
But, until then, what information are we still missing, despite the last two days' worth of testimony? Here are a few of what Donald Rumsfeld used to call the "known unknowns."
Stastical Methodology. Forgive us for harping on this point, but at least twice yesterday, Senators noted to Petraeus that his figures for determining the status of security in Iraq are under question, only to decline to pursue any answers. By some estimates, Iraq in 2007 is more deadly for civilians than Iraq in 2006. Similarly, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, following on concerns from both the CIA and the DIA, said last week that it can't determine that sectarian killings are in fact on the decline. Petraeus referred today to his command's "pretty logical and rational" methdology, and said on Monday that the tabulation has remained consistent since before he took over the command. But though he hinted at it today, he didn't discuss how his command tabulates sectarian killings; whether his command relies on the Iraqi government for its total of civilian casualties; or if they revise its total of "insurgent" deaths after an engagement when eyewitnesses claim civilians were killed.
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.
Finishing up, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) asked what's standing in the way of continued contracting fraud in Iraq. Neither Gen. Petraeus nor Amb. Crocker had much in the way of a detailed answer, but both singled out the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, as a key bulwark against waste, fraud and abuse.
Given that Petraeus wants to speed up weapons purchases by Iraq under the Pentagon's Foreign Military Sales programs, maybe those safeguards should be looked at in greater detail.
Gen. Petraeus ranked the enemies the U.S. is fighting in Iraq at the behest of Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), and there was a notable absence: the non-al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency. All of a sudden, practically every Sunni anti-U.S. fighter is now defined as al-Qaeda.
Petraeus listed al-Qaeda as "the wolf closest to the shed," followed by Shiite militias, who are the cause of much of the "ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad." After that came the "non-kinetic" enemies, such as getting the "institutional structures" established for the Iraqi government, problems with training the Iraqi security forces, corruption and so forth. As he was finishing his list, Petraeus then realized he had forgotten someone: "There are certainly still some Sunni insurgents out there."
Al-Qaeda in Iraq is, at most, 15 percent of the Sunni insurgency. One expert, Malcolm Nance, who's worked with the U.S. military and intelligence in Iraq, puts AQI at two to five percent of the Sunni insurgency. It's good news that several insurgent groups, like the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and toward us. The August National Intelligence Estimate is silent on the Sunni insurgency, but certainly doesn't say it has been marginalized.
That shouldn't be surprising: the recent ABC/BBC/NHK poll found that 93 percent of Sunnis believe that attacks on the U.S. are justified. What's more, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical powerhouse, recently issued a communique to the entire, fractious Sunni "resistance." If there's only a rump Sunni insurgency, someone forgot to tell the AMS.
Petraeus has repeatedly referred to himself as a "realist" over the past two days. But suggesting the Sunni insurgency is diminished to the point of marginality after the anti-al-Qaeda shift is, at best, wishful thinking.
Good question from Sen. John Thune (R-SD) to Gen. Petraeus. If the Iraqi security forces are ready to take over responsibility for Iraq before sectarian reconciliation has occurred -- not an unlikely scenario, given the dismal prospects for political progress, Crocker notwithstanding -- is the U.S. mission, you know, accomplished? Petraeus' answer: not necessarily. If the government was set to collapse, the U.S. might stay in Iraq to prop it up, even if the Iraqi Army and police are able to control the country. That's quite an extraordinary statement. Petraeus probably means to avoid limiting his options, but it's never before been suggested by anyone in uniform that we would stay in Iraq to support an Iraqi government after the Iraqi military has Stood Up.
With the largest U.S. presence in Iraq of the entire war, Baghdad is still being ethnically cleansed, and at least 1000 Iraqis (a very conservative estimate) are dying every month. Petraeus and Crocker didn't get any questions about Iraq in this context. Instead, senators have asked about a prospective humanitarian catastrophe in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal.
There's no doubt that's a legitimate question, since any withdrawal scenario has to contemplate disaster, not just for U.S. forces but for Iraqis. Here Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asks Crocker if post-occupation Iraq will be worse than the genocide in Darfur. Crocker doesn't quite endorse the statement, but says "the prospects for a truly catastrophic humanitarian disaster could be considerable." And indeed, it could be, and the country needs to debate that. Yet part of that debate should be the fact that sectarian cleansing is happening in Iraq right now, despite the best efforts of the largest U.S. force in Iraq since the invasion.
Given half the opportunity by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Gen. Petraeus eagerly backtracked on his earlier admission to Sen. Warner that he didn't know if success in Iraq would make America safer.
For an excellent illustration of the difference in candor between Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker that's emerged during these three hearings, take a look at this exchange with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Collins asked how much longer Americans could be expected to expend blood and treasure on a war without evident Iraqi political progress.
Petraeus responded that "if we arrive at that point a year from now, it's something I'll have to think very, very, very hard about," since America has "real national interests at stake." Even if you disagree with Petraeus' assessment, it's a fair point, and he didn't duck a hypothetical, which he easily could have done.
Crocker, by contrast, simply repeated his claim that the "trajectory" of political progress is "upward," thereby waving away the concern. "I can't say what I'll be saying in a year, or even six months from now, but I can tell you that I'll make the same objective and honest assessment I tried to do for this testimony."
Petraeus has been slippery in his own way during these hearings (see here and here for examples), but Crocker's statement that Iraqi politics is on the right course certainly doesn't instill confidence in his objectivity.
So much for "conditions." Under questioning from Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Gen. Petraeus conceded that his timetable for ending the surge by July 2008 is due to the five extra active-duty Brigade Combat Teams coming to the end of their scheduled deployments and the lack of available units to keep U.S. troop strength at 162,000.
Remember this when President Bush on Thursday unveils his (read: Petraeus') "drawdown" plan -- and, for that matter, any time a politician says that the only "responsible" reduction of forces is one that's "conditions-based."
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) doesn't think Gen. Petraeus has enough war on his hands. The senator (changing the subject from Iraq with "I want to go to Iran...") asked Petraeus if he wanted "the authority" from Congress to "pursue the Qods forces into Iranian territory." Petraeus, for some reason, politely declined to start a third contemporaneous U.S. war.
Once again, Gen. Petraeus was asked about how long it will take to draw down to his strategy's envisioned end state of five U.S. brigades on an "overwatch" mission. And once again he dodged, saying when the reductions need to take place will have to wait until "we get closer each of those times."
Months ago, Amb. Crocker told Joe Klein of Time magazine that "The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing." Or did he? Asked by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) if that was an accurate quote, Crocker equivocated repeatedly before finally saying "I do not recall saying that."
What does Klein think about Crocker's memory?
Update: Here's Klein's response: "He said it. I've got it in my notes. He never denied it or asked for a correction after it appeared in print and was featured on Meet the Press. He may not remember it, but he said it."
Perhaps the most difficult question for Iraq, no matter where you stand on withdrawal, is what happens after the U.S. leaves. Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) asked Amb. Crocker what confidence he had that the Anbar tribal shift against al-Qaeda could take hold in the absence of the U.S., and Crocker answered that the Iraqi government is investing billions in infrastructure development, including in Anbar. Fine, Sununu asked; but what will ensure that the Iraqi government will spend that money?
Crocker's answer: "There are a number of mechanisms Iraq has in place," including inspectors general in the ministries and the Commission on Public Integrity, to guard against corruption. Are they at all competent? "To a degree," Crocker said.
Is it more important to fight al-Qaeda in Pakistan or al-Qaeda in Iraq? was Sen. Russ Feingold's (D-WI) question.
It was a fair one for Amb. Crocker, who came to Iraq after serving for nearly two years as ambassador to Pakistan. Crocker, anticipating where Feingold was clearly going with this, diplomatically answered, "I did not feel as Ambassador to Pakistan that the focus, the resources and the people needed to deal with that situation weren't available or weren't there because of Iraq." And yet, the July National Intelligence Estimate found that al-Qaeda Senior Leadership, as it's called, has reestablished a "safehaven" in the tribal areas of Pakistan. So Crocker didn't exactly "deal with that situation" satisfactorily. When Feingold pressed again for an answer, Crocker gave another diplomatic version: "In my view, fighting al-Qaeda is what's important, whatever front they're on."
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) then turned to General Petraeus. Petraeus' job isn't to fight, or to plan, the entire war; as he said to Feingold, it's a question better directed to Admiral Fallon, the Central Command chief, not to mention President Bush, Defense Secretary Gates, or Director of National Intelligence McConnell.
Feingold called the unwillingness to "seriously comment about how this relates to the larger global fight against terrorism" a "classic example of myopia, the myopia of Iraq."
Finally, the question on everyone's mind. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) asked how the turn of Anbar Sunnis against al-Qaeda relates to national reconciliation -- what Amb. Crocker and President Bush have endlessly called "bottom-up" reconciliation. Of course, there aren't any Shiites in Anbar, so how does that reconciliation work?
Both Crocker and Gen. Petraeus answered the same way: reconciliation can be perceived by the Maliki government's willingness to pay for Anbar "volunteers" to join the Iraqi security forces. What that really means is that the Interior Ministry is paying the salaries of 27,000 Anbari Sunnis to police their province. But Crocker said that, at least, the financing shows that the "two entities" -- Anbar province and the Maliki government -- are "establishing working linkages." Petraeus added that in Baghdad -- not really the area at issue in the substance of the question, but still -- the "volunteers" in Sunni neighborhoods against al-Qaeda are going to be allowed by the Maliki government to no longer be "fixed in place" for operations. That means that the ministries of defense and interior will send the Sunnis newly in their ranks to areas outside their own neighborhoods.
Gen. Petraeus made much of the Marine Expeditionary Unit that he's sending home later this month. After an interjection by Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), the general clarified that the 2,000 Marines were schedule to come home anyway. The key, he said, is that he hasn't recommended that another unit relieve the Marines.
Echoing Amb. Crocker's "bottom-up" picture, Gen. Petraeus told presidential hopeful Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) that what gives him reason to believe reconciliation is on the way is that reconciliation efforts on the ground are outpacing the "big law" in Baghdad. There may be no amnesty law for ex-insurgents, for instance, but amnesty is the right word for "former insurgents in Abu Ghraib next to a Sunni-Shiite fault line being allowed to attend a police academy."
And yet in 2006, Prime Minister Maliki established a reconciliation program that didn't go anywhere. There were a number of reconciliation conferences in 2005 as well. If Petraeus and Crocker are ready to say that centrally-directed efforts at reconciliation are irrelevant, they should say it outright, so the administration, Congress and the Iraqis can debate the point. But to suggest that local steps will lead to the end of the intractability is a tall order, belied by the last two years of history.
Sen. Biden proclaimed himself uninterested in the methodological dispute between Petraeus' command and the GAO. But when Petraeus reaffirmed that the last five weeks of positive data collection on civilian casualties would have changed the GAO's skeptical assessment of the surge, Biden arched an eyebrow. "Five weeks is a moment," Biden said.
Petraeus, for his part, said that "their data is our data." Maybe so, but their analysis is very different from Petraeus', and that just makes the question about methodological quality all the more pressing.
Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker are before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning, and are still on opening statements. As they reiterated their statements, I noticed something in Petraeus' description of the credibility of his methodology for sectarian attacks and civilian casualties. Here's how Petraeus describd his "rigorous, consistent data collection and analysis:
Two US intelligence agencies recently reviewed our methodology, and they concluded that the data we produce is the most accurate and authoritative in Iraq.
As Josh noted yesterday, it would be nice to know which agencies these are, as CIA and DIA reportedly have qualms about MNF-I's methods. But looking at that statement closely, it may be possible to square the methodological circle. Notice that Petraeus didn't say that those agencies blessed MNF-I's methods as the "most accurate and authoritative," full-stop. He said that they found it's the most accurate and authoritative in Iraq. The alternative collection and analysis on Iraq is conducted by different agencies of the Iraqi government, which release sometimes-conflicting data. And needless to say, the Iraqi government has a huge incentive to downplay both civilian and especially sectarian casualties.
It would be hard for the professionals at MNF-I to have a worse methodology than the Iraqis. But that doesn't mean MNF-I has a better method of tallying both figures than other elements of the U.S. government. Perhaps the Senators today will get some clarification from Petraeus.
Gen. Petraeus almost made it through today's marathon hearing without a question about his September 2004 op-ed in the Washington Post claiming that training for the Iraqi security forces -- which he then commanded -- was going well. Almost.
Not much of that op-ed looks prescient today. Among its claims:
By early spring, nine academies in Iraq and one in Jordan will be graduating a total of 5,000 police each month from the eight-week course, which stresses patrolling and investigative skills, substantive and procedural legal knowledge, and proper use of force and weaponry, as well as pride in the profession and adherence to the police code of conduct.
Nearly three years later, the Jones commission found that the police have practically no investigative or forensic skills to speak of, and that the Iraqi Army -- considered the more competent and trustworthy service -- is at least a year away from having the capacity to take over the country. While it's hard to say that any specific statistic in the op-ed is wrong, events didn't bear out Petraeus' portrait of an increasingly competent security force.
In response to a question from Rep Eliot Engel (D-NY), however, Petraeus defended the piece.
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.
Rep Vic Snyder (D-AK) took a look at Gen. Petraeus' plan for drawing down troops and had a question: how long will we ultimately be in Iraq? Petraeus didn't answer.
Notice that over some unspecified period of time, Petraeus envisions drawing down to five U.S. brigades, for strategic and operational "overwatch" purposes, which would mean between 20,000 and 25,000 troops remaining in the country. In fairness, this is a question for President Bush -- more realistically, his successor -- but getting an answer is still critical.
Both Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker endorsed the White House's upcoming benchmark report -- the one that the White House will want to call the Petraeus Report. "I don't think that there is any substantive change in that report, according to the draft I saw the other day, nothing substantive whatsoever that was different in that report," Petraeus said. Crocker assented.
Here's a surprise: Gen. Petraeus told Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS) that his command and the Maliki government have a standing committee to work out timetables for transferring control of Iraqi provinces to the Iraqis. Those timetables are apparently classified, but Petraeus said he'd get them to the House Armed Services Committee.
It would be interesting to know how the timetable for turning over Iraqi provinces corresponds to Gen. Petraeus' cautious recommendations on troop withdrawals. He said that the timetables can slip, owing to circumstances -- Diyala will take longer, owing to the infusion of insurgents to Baquba since the surge; Anbar will be turned over in January 2008 -- which is fair enough.
But does Petraeus envision a departure of forces from a province back to the U.S., or a reassignment of forces to a different one? Or will U.S. forces simply remain in some provinces in support roles? After all, at some point, all 18 provinces will be turned over. What will happen to U.S. forces then? Or will certain provinces -- say, Baghdad, which is its own province -- not be turned over in any foreseeable time frame?
Also, if Petraeus can say openly that Anbar can be handed over in January 2008, why should the rest of the timetables be classified?
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.
While Gen. Petraeus repeatedly cited the Sunni tribal turn against al-Qaeda as the most significant development in Iraq over the last year, he balks at the suggestion that his command is providing them with guns. "We have never given weapons to tribals," he said. "What we have done is applaud when they ask if they can point their guns at al-Qaeda."
But that's a precious distinction. As the New York Timesreported yesterday:
Under the project, financed by the American military, the local tribes are paid $10 a day per man to provide security in their areas.
Despite protestations from United States commanders that they are not arming those “volunteers,” local American officers confirm that the sheiks can spend the contract money as they wish, diverting money from wages to buy weapons, radios or vehicles if they choose.
Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.) wasn't buying Amb. Crocker's portrait of sotto voce reconciliation efforts. Crocker, however, decided to double down, saying that the "Sunnis are now linking to the federal government by being part of the police force."
Unfortunately, the Shiite government believes, and not without reason, that the Sunni infusion into the local police and Iraqi Army will ultimately lead to a coup. Witness one Sunni recently tellingThe New York Times that "If we get into the Iraqi police we can move to Mahmudiya and Yusufiya and south Baghdad to free them and kill all the militias.”
To Crocker, those provincial moves against al-Qaeda "could be the seeds of reconciliation."
At several points during his testimony, Crocker has stated that "fundamental questions" over what sort of country Iraq will be is hindering reconciliation, while simultaneously hinting that such reconciliation is already occurring in miniature. Both statements can't be true at once.
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) asked Gen. Petraeus why his withdrawal plan is so circumscribed when other military officials -- including the Central Command chief, Admiral William Fallon -- believe a more rapid draw-down is possible and responsible, as The Washington Post reported this weekend. "A senior civilian official" told the Post that calling relations between Fallon and Petraeus "bad" would be "the understatement of the century."
During the hearing, however, Petraeus called his plan his "best professional military judgment," and stated that both Admiral Fallon "fully supports" his recommendations, "as do the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
A few minutes later, Petraeus stated that he believes Fallon is the victim of mistaken press accounts. Supposedly there was a Central Command assessment taking a much longer view of the Iraq situation, and not in conflict with Petraeus' own. Fallon, he said, agrees with Petraeus' view.
And you thought the surge hadn't yielded tangible political gains. According to Amb. Crocker, the surge has "changed the dynamic" politically "for the better," as it has given Iraqis the "time and space to reflect on the kind of country they want." Significantly, Crocker is not conceding that reconciliation is failing, but attempting to change the terms of the debate.
As expected, Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified that the benchmarks aren't the only, or even the most important, indicators of political progress. "The seeds of reconciliation are being planted," said Crocker, referring to Iraqis in government discussing federalism and oil-wealth revenue sharing.
That's mightily convenient, given that Iraq isn't meeting the benchmarks, according to the GAO.
So much for the surge ending in the spring of 2008. Petraeus said that in order to preserve the gains made in security, he's recommended drawing down one brigade combat team -- about 5,000 troops -- by December, with the remaining 25,000 or so troops of the surge out by July 2008. Any further draw-downs will have to wait for his further assessment -- coming in March 2008. So March 2008 is the new September 2007.
General Petraeus brought out his data today, saying that two U.S. intelligence agencies back his methodology. He did not explain -- yet -- what that methodology is, but said that it has remained consistent over at least a year, which would predate Petraeus' arrival in Iraq.
Petraeus' information appears to measure attacks week by week. He didn't give comparisons to overall attacks in 2006, but opted instead to measure from discrete points in 2006: December for measures of overall violence; June 2006 for IED violence; October 2006 for attacks in Anbar province.
We'll have Petraeus' slides for you to see shortly.
One thing to watch for during General Petraeus' testimony today and tomorrow: Will he continue to insist on keeping classified his command's methodology for determining which civilian attacks count as sectarian violence?
Petraeus has made numerous assertions that sectarian violence has fallen dramatically, but so far, he hasn't explained how he's derived the basis for the claim. But on Friday, the head of the Government Accountability Office, David Walker, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Petraeus' methodology isn't something agencies throughout the government have confidence in.
Much to the chagrin of the Pentagon, the report released by Walker's GAO last week found that average daily attacks against civilians had remained flat during the lifetime of the surge. Which of those attacks qualified as sectarian violence? GAO found it wasn't clear that, contra Petraeus, sectarian attacks were on the decline, since it -- and other agencies within the government -- found the methodology for such a calculation dubious. According to the Washington Post, shooting someone in the back of the head is a sign of sectarian violence to Petraeus, but a frontal shot isn't.
I asked Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), Petraeus' command, how it calculated sectarian violence last week, and I still haven't gotten a response. But here's what Walker told Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) (the classified annex of the GAO report contains much more about Petraeus' methodology):
First, [Petraeus'] data will show that sectarian violence is going down in recent months. He will show that. Secondly, we have -- we cannot get comfortable with the methodology that's used to determine of total violence, which is sectarian and which is nonsectarian related. It's extremely difficult to do that. I mean, you know, people don't necessarily leave calling cards, you know, when certain things happen. And even if there is, you know, some type of attempt to leave information -- you don't know the accuracy or reliability of it. And so we've said that his data will show it's gone down. We're not comfortable with the methodology. And please read the classified report, because it's not just our view.
It took some time and effort, but, with the aid of TPM readers, we've obtained two complete lists of monthly Iraqi civilian casualties from January 2006 forward. Taking these numbers on their own terms, they do not bear out the claims made by the Bush administration and U.S. military that the surge has reduced Iraqi civilian casualties. Comparing each month's death toll in 2007 to the death toll from that same month in 2006, the numbers show that surge has not made Iraq safer for the civilian population. By some measurements, Iraqis are in greater danger than a year ago.
It's a sign of how skewed the debate over the Iraq War is that these numbers are not readily available. Different Iraqi government agencies present different casualty figures. The U.S. military's own casualty total is said to rely on the Iraqis, but it's unclear which Iraqi agency it uses or what adjustments are made to the Iraqi figures. Even as today's testimony from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is considered a possible make-or-break moment for U.S. policy on Iraq, with the Bush Administration and the Pentagon touting the success of the surge in reducing civilian casualties, there is no general agreement on what civilian casualties have been or on what the most accurate methodology for tallying casualties is.
The two lists presented here rely on statistics gathered by the Associated Press and by Iraq Body Count, a reputable British organization that has done Herculean work in compiling civilian-casualty data. It's important to note that these lists aren't comprehensive. Tallying Iraqi civilian casualties is an incomplete and arduous task, made extremely difficult by the situation on the ground. Both surveys readily acknowledge that their figures are undercounts of the true Iraqi civilian casualty rate. But the significance of these two charts is that each study employs its own internally consistent methodology for determining Iraqi casualties and has done so over a significant period of time, allowing an independent assessment -- albeit imprecise -- to measure against what we'll hear from Petraeus and Crocker.
General Petraeus will go before Congress this afternoon to argue that the surge is working -- that sectarian killings and attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces are substantially down. The military's secret numbers will serve as support for those conclusions, even as numbers from within the government (e.g. those collected by the Defense Intelligence Agency) dispute them.
We'll have more on the numbers game a little later. But from Petraeus' perspective, the question appears closed. We're making progress -- just how much is a secondary question. As he wrote in a recent letter to U.S. forces, we're "a long way from the goal line, but we do have the ball and we are driving down the field." We have the ball!
Accordingly, Petraeus' counsel to the president, The New York Timesreports this morning, is to make March the new September. As a concession to those who worry about military preparedness and are calling for a draw down, one Army brigade, a unit that was in place before the surge, would depart in December. The full force minus that reduction of 4,000 would stay in place through March of next year. Then, and only then, would Petraeus make a decision about bringing the number to pre-surge levels -- possibly by next summer. Anything sooner, a military official tells the Times, would be "premature."
But there are no guarantees:
Even as American commanders plan to reduce the overall force, they have stressed that the troop reductions could be adjusted or delayed if violence increases. Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, has said one important factor being weighed is whether attacks increase during the approaching Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as has happened in the past.
“Ramadan is big,” General Odierno said last week. “So far in the 30 days before Ramadan, violence has been going down.”
“If we can continue to do what we are doing, we’ll get to such a level where we think we can do it with less troops,” he added.
Presumably next Ramadan will be the true test of whether the strategy is working?
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