Also in Waxman's report on the 2004 lynching of Blackwater contractors in Fallujah is an expletive-laden internal assessment of the quality of the company's Baghdad shop at the time.

One Blackwater employee described it as "flat out a sloppy f**king operation" and further stated:

The caliber of most of the people here is not what it needs to be. More training, more discipline, and a more selective screening process are needed. ... Some of these lazy f**ks care about one thing, money. I suggest if you continue to employ that kind of trash, that you develop a way to use "their money" as a way to get them to do some f**king work. This "I'm not in the military any more, I can do as I please/ I know I can't afford to loose [sic] more guys" bulls**t is a non-starter.

Waxman is holding hearings next week on Blackwater and Iraq contracting corruption issues. It'll be interesting to hear Blackwater explain how its standards have improved from 2004 to 2007. After all, they've gotten more State Department work than any other contractor, so they must be getting better -- right?

Right on the heels of a Brookings Institution report detailing the problems private military companies create for counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has released a study finding that Blackwater improperly prepared its contractors for traveling through Fallujah in March 2004 -- a trip that proved to be fatal.

Internal Blackwater reviews and eyewitness accounts obtained by Waxman's oversight committee conclude that the company sent its four employees to Fallujah in what one disgusted Blackwater colleague called "unarmored, underpowered vehicles." The day before the ambush, Blackwater's Baghdad operations manager complained to the company's North Carolina headquarters that he was in dire need of weapons, ammunition, communications equipment and "hard cars." Yet Waxman's report (pdf) cites another employee who says Blackwater opted to go with "soft skin" -- that is, unarmored vehicles -- "due to the cost."

But it wasn't just the cost. Blackwater's reliance on unarmored vehicles was part of a scheme to undercut a competitor, the Kuwaiti company Regency Hotel & Hospital, in order to gain control of a contract Regency held with ESS Support Services Worldwide, which in turn had valuable contracts with Kellogg, Brown & Root and Fluor.

Several reports by Blackwater personnel in Baghdad and Kuwait indicate that Blackwater never intended to armor its vehicles, which included Honda Pilot SUVs, but instead force Regency into purchasing new vehicles or risk losing its role on the ESS contract. ... A second Blackwater employee reported that he was told to "string these guys along and run this Honda thing into the ground" because "if we stalled long enough they (Regency) would have no choice but to buy armored cars, or to default on the contract, and ESS might go directly to Blackwater for security."

During a time of significant military overstretch, private security companies hired by the Defense Department have been actively recruiting U.S. troops. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee that he's considering no-recruit clauses for future contracts in order to ensure retention doesn't suffer.

"My personal concern about some of these security contracts is that I worry that sometimes the salaries they are able to pay in fact lures some of our soldiers out of the service to go to work for them," he said.

Gates said he was seeking legal advice on whether a "non-compete" clause could be put into security contracts that limits this problem.

Hard data measuring the direct effect contractor recruitment has on military retention is difficult, since retention rates don't factor in reasons for leaving. However, says contractor expert P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, there's a flurry of anecdotal evidence that contractor recruitment is intense. "Military folks talk about getting business cards handed to them while in Iraq," he says. Additionally, the impact of contractor recruitment can be seen in the recently-raised retention bonuses that the Defense Department has offered re-upping troops: "There are competing offers out there now."

The problem is particularly acute in specialty disciplines, like Special Operations and explosive ordnance disposal, which contractors consider particularly lucrative. (Blackwater is staffed by many veterans of the Special Operations community, and its founder, Erik Prince, is an ex-Navy SEAL.) A recent study Singer directed at Brookings on military readiness, titled "Bent But Not Broken," found that elite military units have had greater difficulty than the general services in meeting their enlisted-personnel goals. Clearly, not all of that can be attributed to contractor influence, but "it's a factor among other reasons," he says.

To add one thing to what the Boss observed about Blackwater being involved in the most shooting incidents of any State Department contractor, consider these two excerpts from The New York Times' piece today. First:

The State Department keeps reports on each case in which weapons were fired by security personnel guarding American diplomats in Iraq. Officials familiar with the internal State Department reports would not provide the actual statistics, but they indicated that the records showed that Blackwater personnel were involved in dozens of episodes in which they had resorted to force.

The officials said that Blackwater’s incident rate was at least twice that recorded by employees of DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, the two other United States-based security firms that have been contracted by the State Department to provide security for diplomats and other senior civilians in Iraq.

And then this:

Last year, the State Department gave Blackwater the lead role in diplomatic security in Iraq, reducing the roles of DynCorp and Triple Canopy.

Blackwater workers in Iraq outnumber those for the other two contractors by more than 2 to 1.

However aggressively Blackwater operates, the State Department clearly approves. No wonder experts consider pointing a finger exclusively at the company to be misleading.

Four years into the occupation, it's time to set some ground rules. Increased oversight of Pentagon contractors in Iraq is on the way, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday.

A fact-finding team Gates sent to Iraq over the weekend found that U.S. military commanders aren't clear about what their authority is over contractors suspected of wrongdoing, a Pentagon official told The Los Angeles Times. As a result, orders issued by Gates' deputy, Gordon England, specify that military officials can "disarm, apprehend and detain DoD contractors suspected of having committed a felony offense."

Several in the private-security industry nevertheless bridled at the prospect of being on the business end of a U.S.-issued M4 rifle. Reports Sharon Behn of The Washington Times:

Gary Myers, an Austin, Texas, lawyer who has defended both contractors and U.S. military personnel — including Sgt. Evan Vela, the soldier accused in a recent sniper-baiting case — disagreed. "Attempting to impose the military justice system on civilians is foolhardy, he said. "It raises more questions than it answers, and is probably constitutionally deficient with respect to civilians."

Such prosecution would subject civilians to trial before a jury of uniformed personnel, not their peers, for actions not usually considered crimes, such as disobedience of an order.

"These men and women [would] now become recognized as a stealth army, and that is an admission that this nation does not need," he said.

Gates' moves don't apply to State Department contractors like Blackwater, which is under pressure after the September 16 Nisour Square incident that left 11 Iraqi civilians dead. And the contrast between State and Defense's approach to security contractors is increasingly on display. In a statement yesterday, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte defended both Blackwater and his agency's oversight of the company, which Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has questioned:

He said the agency provided "close in-country supervision" of the firm.

"I personally was grateful for the presence of my Blackwater security detail, largely comprised of ex-Special Forces and other military, when I served as ambassador to Iraq," he said.

A forthcoming study by private-military contractor expert P.W. Singer obtained by TPMmuckraker finds that Blackwater and other private security firms in Iraq are detrimental to U.S. counterinsurgency efforts.

Singer, author of the landmark book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, goes beyond the current Blackwater imbroglio to criticize the entire system for security contracting in Iraq. He finds that even though private military firms represent a hindrance to counterinsurgency objectives, the privatization boom beginning in the 1980s has left the U.S. military functionally dependent on the companies for numerous combat operations and logistics tasks. Private military companies have become "the ultimate enabler" for military commitments, Singer writes in "Can't Win With 'Em, Can't Go To War Without 'Em: Private Military Contractors and Counter-Insurgency," allowing a politically cost-free way for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq without a massive call-up of reserve forces.

What the contracting industry diminishes in political cost it compounds in actual cost to counterinsurgency. Iraqis view private companies like Blackwater as lawless, and they have no reason to distinguish between private contractors and U.S. troops -- thereby compounding the danger to U.S. forces from infuriated Iraqis.

A real world example illustrates how this process plays out. An Iraqi is driving in Baghdad, on his way to work. A convoy of black-tinted SUVs comes down the highway at him, driving in his lane, but in the wrong direction. They are honking their horns at the oncoming traffic and firing machine gun bursts into the road and in front of any vehicle that gets too close. He veers to the side of the road. As the SUVs drive by, Western-looking men in sunglasses point machine guns at him.

Over the course of the day, that Iraqi civilian might tell X people about how "The Americans almost killed me today, and all I was doing was trying to get to work." Y is the number of other people that convoy ran off the road on its run that day. Z is the number of convoys in Iraq that day. Multiply X times Y times Z times 365 and you have a mathematical equation for how to lose a counterinsurgency in a year. (And that assumes he doesn't tell his mom or wife about the incident, upon which they are likely to tell the entire neighborhood about how the Americans almost killed their boy/husband, multiplying the equation further.)

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"It may be worse than Abu Ghraib."

That's a senior U.S. military official explaining to The Washington Post how strongly Iraqis are reacting to Blackwater's September 16th shooting of civilians in Baghdad. By contrast, here's a State Department official: "The bottom line of this is that we recognize that there's an issue here."

In the gap between those two assessments lies the acrimony between the Pentagon and the State Department over the shooting. The State Department hired Blackwater to protect its dignitaries in Iraq, and so it has to balance its relationship with the Iraqi government with its need to protect Blackwater from reprisal. But the military sees Blackwater's relaxed rules of engagement -- issued by the State Department -- as hurtful to its efforts to turn Iraqis against the Sunni insurgency and the Shiite militias. (More on this later today.)

"They are immature shooters and have very quick trigger fingers. Their tendency is shoot first and ask questions later," said an Army lieutenant colonel serving in Iraq. Referring to the Sept. 16 shootings, the officer added, "None of us believe they were engaged, but we are all carrying their black eyes."

"Many of my peers think Blackwater is oftentimes out of control," said a senior U.S. commander serving in Iraq. "They often act like cowboys over here . . . not seeming to play by the same rules everyone else tries to play by."

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The long-story-short on measuring sectarian violence in Iraq? Don't expect consistent data across U.S. agencies.

The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung gets an in-depth explanation of how the U.S. military's Iraq command, known as MNF-I, tallies sectarian statistics, and notes the discrepancies between how the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence characterize the same data. On Friday, we published MNF-I's explanation of what it does -- and doesn't -- consider sectarian violence.

The analyst in charge of MNF-I's sectarianism database is a chief warrant officer named Dan Macomber, and he freely concedes that there's room for debate over whether or not his methodology is proper or consistent.

In recent months, most of the military's indicators have pointed in a favorable direction. As with all statistics, however, their meaning depends on how they are gathered and analyzed. "Everybody has their own way of doing it," Macomber said of his sectarian analyses. "If you and I . . . pulled from the same database, and I pulled one day and you pulled the next, we would have totally different numbers."

Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian casualty numbers in the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq last week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional testimony. Petraeus's chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon combined the numbers of dead and wounded -- a figure that should be greater. Yet Petraeus's numbers were higher than the Pentagon's for the months preceding this year's increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations escalated this summer.

That's not to say the Pentagon quarterly report's tabulation is consistent, either. As we've noted, the report's tabulation of sectarian killing has fluctuated between editions. In the September edition, for instance, the Pentagon suddenly decided to include vehicle- and suicide-bombings in its sectarian total. According to Macomber, whenever MNF-I sent the Pentagon its sectarian-incident numbers, it always included car bombs and suicide bombs in the count, but the Pentagon, for unexplained reasons, plucked those incidents out. Why the change? "We regularly review our metrics to determine the most informative way to report what is happening in Iraq," a DOD spokesman e-mailed DeYoung.

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Earlier today I guessed that a potential prosecution of Blackwater by the Iraqi government would cause a panic from other security contractors fearing a similar fate. But a leading expert on private military companies says I'm underestimating the allure of the financial score.

Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution has done pioneering work on the emerging role of private security, going back to his landmark 2003 book Corporate Warriors. Singer says that even in the unlikely event that Iraq prosecutes Blackwater, its rivals will look to take over its multi-million contract with the State Department rather than look to the next flight out of Baghdad (the contracts since 2003 have been worth approximately $678 million). "People are going to weigh risks differently," he says. "Just like [security firms] ask 'is moving a convoy worth the risk to life and limb?', they'll ask 'is making a certain amount of money worth it?' It'll be another weighting factor if there are prosecutions. Some will accept it, and some will say it's not worth ending up in an Iraqi jail."

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The Iraqi Zapruder has arrived. Only his tape indicts Blackwater rather than absolves it.

Over the weekend, the Iraqi Interior Ministry released details of its investigation into the shooting incident last Sunday involving operatives of the private security firm. In addition to eyewitness testimony, the ministry says it has a videotape of Blackwater guards opening fire on civilians at Baghdad's Nisour Square after a nearby car failed to heed a traffic policeman's order to stop. The tape, recorded by cameras at the nearby National Police Command Center, is the first known documentation of the shooting, which resulted in the deaths of 11 Iraqis and threw gasoline on the explosive issue of legal immunity for U.S. security contractors.

As predicted, Iraqi officials have backed off their demand that the State Department expel Blackwater from Iraq. (Blackwater guards most U.S. civilian potentates, who don't want to see their bodyguards kicked out of Iraq for protecting them.) But the Interior Ministry said it will refer the Blackwater case to Iraqi courts for criminal charges.

That creates another test for U.S.-Iraqi relations: before disbanding in 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority passed an edict, known as Order 17, absolving U.S. security contractors from Iraqi prosecution, thereby depriving Iraq of any ability to rein in security firms accused of lawless behavior. If a Blackwater prosecution goes forward, the U.S. will be acknowledging that Order 17 is annulled, and security firms will be subject to prosecution from an Iraqi legal system that most outside observers acknowledge is, at best, in its infancy. To put the U.S.'s choice starkly, it's this: either accept a kangaroo court or humiliate the U.S.'s alleged partners in the Iraqi government.

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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.

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White House spokeswoman Dana Perino had a hard time with questions about the State Department's use of Blackwater during this afternoon's press briefing:

Q Why do you have to have private contractors who have, on the face of it, a lousy record?

MS. PERINO: Well, I think that there is because -- I think that is because there is a need. I don't know why it was originally set up that way....

More from the briefing below.

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Looks like Condi Rice is taking a cue from her inspector general.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday she had ordered a "full and complete review" of security practices for U.S. diplomats following a deadly weekend incident in Iraq involving private guards protecting a U.S. embassy convoy in Baghdad.

Rice said she had directed the State Department to examine "how we are providing security to our diplomats."

To recap, while the Iraqi prime minister says Blackwater killed Iraqi civilians "in cold blood," the State Department is promising to "review" its security procedures -- with details on the scope of that review to come later -- and already has Blackwater back to work. Very diplomatic.

Since State Department officials' ability to travel in Iraq had been severely limited by Blackwater's temporary shutdown, it was just a matter of time:

American convoys under the protection of Blackwater USA resumed on Friday, four days after the U.S. Embassy suspended all land travel by its diplomats and other civilian officials in response to the alleged killing of civilians by the security firm....

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said the decision to resume land travel outside the heavily fortified Green Zone was made after consultations with the Iraqi governments. She said the convoys will be limited to essential missions.

Blackwater had better hope there's an Iraqi Abraham Zapruder out there. The Interior Ministry has pieced together an account of Sunday's shooting in Mansour alleging that the private-security company fired on civilians at a traffic circle in Nisour Squar with practically no provocation.

In the Interior Ministry account — made available to The New York Times on Thursday — Iraqi investigators interviewed many witnesses but relied on the testimony of the people they considered to be the four most credible.

The account says that as soon as the guards took positions in four locations in the square, they began shooting south, killing a driver who had failed to heed a traffic policeman’s call to stop.

“The Blackwater company is considered 100 percent guilty through this investigation,” the report concludes.

An internal U.S. forensic analysis is still ongoing, and an announced joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation has yet to get underway. But the Interior Ministry is already using the report as a lever for getting the State Department to cancel Blackwater's contract to protect U.S. diplomats -- a move State is refusing. The Iraqis also want U.S. security companies to be subject to Iraqi criminal liability.

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On Tuesday, Admiral McConnell, director of national intelligence, told the House Judiciary Committee that a FISA Court ruling earlier this year prevented the NSA from eavesdropping on Iraqi insurgents who had captured U.S. soldiers. At least one FISA expert we spoke with found the claim "totally implausible." Today, McConnell offered some details about the incident to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in response to a question from ranking Republican Peter Hoekstra.

Well, sir, I have to be a little careful because of sources and method issues. But the situation was, as you know, because global communications move on wire, you can have a situation where information would pass on a wire through this country. So for us to specifically target the individuals that were involved in that kidnap, we had to go through a court order process.

Now, when we've talked about this before, people frequently say, "Well, wait a minute. Why don't you just do emergency FISA?" Well, that is the point. We are extending Fourth Amendment rights to a terrorist foreigner foreign country who's captured U.S. soldiers. And we're now going through a process to produce probable cause that we would have authority to go after these terrorists.

And then people say, "Well, why don't you just go? You got emergency authorization." Well, emergency authorization doesn't mean you don't go through the process, which is probable cause. So some analyst has got to do it and some official's got to sign it out. And it has to come to either me or some other official. Then it goes to the attorney general. Then it goes to FISA court.

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If Erik Prince of Blackwater shows up at the House oversight committee's hearing into his company's activities in Iraq, expect him to get an earful. It's not just about the Mansour incident, or the murky legal status the private-security firm possesses. According to the Iraqi government, Blackwater employees engineered a jailbreak to free a minister convicted of corruption charges.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki referred obliquely to the incident yesterday. But a Defense Ministry spokesman told Leila Fadel of McClatchy that Blackwater, in December, broke former Electricity Minister Ahyam al-Samarrai out of prison in the Green Zone, where he was awaiting sentencing for embezzling $2.5 billion in reconstruction money.

Until now, Iraqi officials hadn't named the private security company that they believe helped Samarrai, the only Iraqi cabinet official convicted of corruption, to escape from a jail that was overseen jointly by U.S. and Iraqi guards. He subsequently was spirited out of the country and is believed to be living in the United States.

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In the wake of the ongoing Blackwater scandal, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wants to have a frank discussion with Erik Prince, the company's founder. His House oversight committee will hold a hearing on Blackwater on October 2. And it just won't be a party if Prince doesn't attend.

Waxman sent Prince a letter today requesting his appearance at the hearing. The little-seen Blackwater official probably won't take kindly to Waxman's intent to question "whether the specific conduct of your company has advanced or impeded U.S. efforts."

The Blackwater hearing offers Waxman the opportunity to link the issue with a different investigation his committee is undertaking. Waxman is also looking into whether the State Department's inspector general, Howard "Cookie" Krongard, obstructed an inquiry into allegations that Blackwater, on a State Department contract, was illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq. Krongard has been invited to an October 20 hearing before the committee.

Text of the letter below the fold.

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The Congressional Budget Office's cost-analysis of a U.S. presence in Iraq following the Korea model -- stationing 55,000 troops there indefinitely, in CBO's reckoning -- allows for the crunching of numbers several different ways. But most appear to be fairly conservative.

CBO estimates that a Korea-style garrisoning will require 55,000 troops for either combat missions or non-combat missions. The former is expected to cost $25 billion annually, and the latter $10 billion annually, on top of one-time fixed costs of $4-$8 billion for the former and $8 billion for the latter. But neither scenario envisions total costs of what President Bush has cited as an "enduring relationship" between the U.S. and Iraq. Funding for the Iraqi security forces, diplomatic operations or country-to-country aid -- probably billions of dollars -- is outside the scope of the CBO report.

Totaling the full cost of the Iraq war requires accepting a range of estimates, particularly in the case of tabulating prospective costs, rather than ones already incurred. Both this report and a preceding CBO report present a ballpark, not a set projection. And an aggregate set of projections for the Iraq war's future cost can only emerge when an endpoint is envisioned. Since the Bush administration has flirted with a Korea-style model for U.S. troops, it seems reasonable to envision a 50-year endpoint, commensurate with the 54 years U.S. troops have been garrisoned in postwar South Korea.

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A new Congressional study finds that President Bush's plans for the U.S. in Iraq over the next several decades will reach the trillions of dollars, on top of the approximately $567 billion the war has already cost. That accounting assumes a significant troop draw-down -- and still tallies a daunting expense for the United States.

We've added the report to our document collection. You can read it here.

On June 1, during a trip to U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu, Defense Secretary Robert Gates mused about how to "posture ourselves" in Iraq "for the long term." The Vietnam experience underscored the undesirability of a sudden, abrupt withdrawal. Far better for the U.S. to follow the experiences of post-conflict garrisoning in Korea and Japan, he said: "a mutually agreed arrangement whereby we have a long and enduring presence." President Bush is reportedly intrigued by the so-called Korea model, wherein the U.S. has guaranteed security on the Korean peninsula with at least four U.S. Army combat brigades for half a century. Indeed, in his speech on Thursday, Bush declared himself ready to build an "enduring relationship" between the U.S. and Iraq.

The study, conducted by the Congressional Budget Office, decided to follow the Korea model to calculate its expense. Since it's unclear for how long or under what conditions combat operations will ensue, the CBO projects both a combat and a non-combat presence. Both, however, are projected to require 55,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The combat scenario entails one-time costs of $4 to $8 billion, with annual expenses of $25 billion, projected outward. Under the non-combat scenario, a $8 billion one-time cost -- mainly for the construction of additional "enduring" bases -- would be followed by annual costs of $10 billion or less.

A prior CBO study, released in August, estimated (large pdf) that U.S. costs in Iraq from 2009 to 2017 will total approximately $1 trillion on the assumption of a troop presence of 75,000. On top of that, under the reduced-force combat scenario envisioned in this CBO estimate, the U.S. will spend another $1 trillion by 2057 -- the lifespan of the U.S.'s Korean presence to date.

All estimates are in 2008 dollars. Both estimates are arguably conservative. In the combat scenario, for instance, Army units serve 12-month tours, whereas they now serve 15-month tours. In the non-combat scenario, the CBO ratcheted down the Defense Department's cost-of-war estimates to reflect "lower costs for such items as equipment maintenance, fuel and consumable materials."

Blackwater: Above the law.

Yesterday we reported that not only is Blackwater immunized from liability under any Iraqi law, but the State Department has allowed it to operate under less restrictive rules of engagement than any other private military company. As a result, the State Department bears responsibility for the culture of impunity that resulted. Today The Washington Post adds more detail:

Blackwater "has a client who will support them no matter what they do," said H.C. Lawrence Smith, deputy director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an advocacy organization in Baghdad that is funded by security firms, including Blackwater.

The State Department allowed Blackwater's heavily armed teams to operate without an Interior Ministry license, even after the requirement became standard language in Defense Department security contracts. The company was not subject to the military's restrictions on the use of offensive weapons, its procedures for reporting shooting incidents or a central tracking system that allows commanders to monitor the movements of security companies on the battlefield.

"The Iraqis despised them, because they were untouchable," said Matthew Degn, who recently returned from Baghdad after serving as senior American adviser to the Interior Ministry. "They were above the law." Degn said Blackwater's armed Little Bird helicopters often buzzed the Interior Ministry's roof, "almost like they were saying, 'Look, we can fly anywhere we want.' "

Last year, Congress passed a law placing contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the law that establishes legal conduct for U.S. forces. Little follow-on work has established what exactly that means for private security companies, however. While the Pentagon has issued a number of so-called fragmentary orders seeking to regulate the private security firms, Blackwater is exempt, since its contracts are with the State Department and CIA. Blackwater isn't required to keep the U.S. military command informed of its operations or file incident reports to it.

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Once he was known as the "Flies On The Eyeballs" guy. Lately, he's been the vice president of controversial private security company Blackwater. Now, Cofer Black has a new position: top counterterrorism adviser to Massachusetts Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

The one-time chief of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center got his flamboyant nickname after delivering a famous post-9/11 briefing to President Bush about the CIA's plans to destroy al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. ("They'll have flies on their eyeballs" when CIA is done with them, Black is reported to have said.) But that wasn't Black's most famous utterance. In September 2002, in his first-ever public testimony before a joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11, Black -- by then the head of the State Department's counterterrorism shop -- acknowledged that in terms of the CIA's "operational flexibility," after 9/11, "the gloves come off." In retrospect, it's considered the first public reference to the agency's detention, rendition and interrogation policies.

Black left government in 2005 to join Blackwater, whose activities in Iraq have drawn both the ire of the Iraqi government and the opprobrium of House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA). But that hasn't disqualified Black from advising Romney's campaign.

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Blackwater doesn't just operate in a legal black hole in Iraq. The private-security firm has grown expert in protecting itself from oversight and regulation in Washington as well.

Over at POGO, Nick Schwellenbach connects Blackwater to House oversight committee chairman Henry Waxman's investigation of Howard Krongard, the State Department inspector general whom Waxman alleges stifled numerous corruption probes in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of those probes involved an alleged Blackwater scheme to funnel weapons into Iraq, and, Schwellenbach notes, it wouldn't be so difficult for Blackwater to know how to get around an IG probe. Its parent company, the Prince Group, recently hired the Pentagon's ex-IG, Joseph Schmitz.

Indeed, all throughout Blackwater are ways to get around government oversight: Cofer Black, the company's vice chairman, used to work at the CIA with A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, formerly CIA's executive director. And, yes, you read that last name correctly: Krongard of CIA is the brother of the current State Department IG. Think Schmitz or Black knew which numbers to call in the event of a State inquiry into the company?

That's not all.

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Few people not employed by Blackwater know more about the rising world of private military companies than Robert Young Pelton, author of Licensed To Kill, an exploration of military contracting in the war on terrorism. Pelton told me it's a mistake to point a finger at Blackwater for Sunday's debacle in Mansour without looking at the role of the State Department -- which, after all, pays Blackwater to protect its diplomats. State doesn't want to take chances with its peoples' lives in the chaos of Iraq.

Blackwater's rules of engagement "are set by State and are different than other security contractors who use the Military Rules of Engagement and Rules of Force," Pelton says via e-mail. "State went from a kinder, gentler Rules of Force (they were told to shoot flares, throw water bottles or wave a flag to warn off motorists) to shoot if a threat is imminent with no warning shots required. They are supposed to use aimed shots and have to file a report if there is any discharge of a weapon." The State Department has said that Blackwater fired warning shots in Sunday's Mansour attack at an approaching car.

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The Iraqi government is pressing hard to kick private-security giant Blackwater out of the country. After a pitched battle between Blackwater operatives and Iraqi insurgents in the Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour left at least nine civilians dead, the Iraqi Interior Ministry revoked Blackwater's license to work in Iraq. Now, the Iraqis are escalating their campaign against Blackwater, claiming that an official inquiry found that the company's agents fired the opening rounds. Reports the New York Times:

The report, by the Ministry of Interior, was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater USA that the guards were responding to gunfire by militants. The report said Blackwater helicopters had also fired. The Ministry of Defense said 20 Iraqis had been killed, a far higher number than had been reported before.

In a sign of the seriousness of the standoff, the American Embassy here suspended diplomatic missions outside the Green Zone and throughout Iraq on Tuesday.

“There was not shooting against the convoy,” said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government’s spokesman. “There was no fire from anyone in the square.”

The explanation from the U.S. on Sunday for the Mansour incident was that a State Department convoy came under attack, prompting the Blackwater guards protecting it to respond with small arms fire and employ helicopter support. A State Department official said Blackwater's people were forced to "defend themselves" against an ambush.

But Dabbagh, the Iraqi spokesman, contradicted that entirely. According to the Iraqi inquiry, he said, a car bomb detonated far from the convoy, prompting Blackwater to overreact. A traffic policeman attempted to clear an area for the convoy to pass, but a "small car" didn't heed the warning. Blackwater responded as if the car represented a follow-on attack. Witnesses interviewed by the Times said that the ensuing confusion prompted Iraqi soldiers and police in the area to fire into the crowd as well.

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In a blistering 14-page letter today (pdf), House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) charged that the inspector general for the State Department Howard Krongard has been actively impeding probes into waste and corruption in Iraq and elsewhere. The basic allegation, as Waxman simply puts it, is that "you believe your foremost mission is to support the Bush Administration, especially with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than act as an independent and objective check on waste, fraud, and abuse on behalf of U.S. taxpayers." In other words, Waxman is charging that he's a hack, and the worst kind, too -- one that can do real damage.

Waxman has a litany of examples of Krongards' alleged hackishness, but one is particularly colorful.

There have been allegations that the contractor First Kuwaiti used forced labor building the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. So Krongard looked into it.

Only he had a peculiar method, according to Waxman's investigation. First, he insisted on doing the report entirely by himself and shut out his staff. And instead of seeking out the source of the allegations, he allowed the contractor to choose the employees that he'd interview. He ultimately interviewed six employees.

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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.

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To the Tongolese: I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for writing on Friday that you're not a member of the Iraq coalition. Sure, the Congressional Research Service said you had pulled out. But according to this Pentagon quasi-press release today, you deployed 55 members of your Tonga Defense Services last month to guard MNF-I headquarters in the Baghdad International Airport complex. It's not exactly a combat mission, but still, this is a huge contribution: Tonga, a South Pacific island nation with a population of under 120,000, has only 450 men under arms.

Says Pacific Command chief Admiral Tim Keating:

Keating, who observed the Tongan troops during a Khaanquest training exercise earlier this summer in Mongolia, said he has no doubt of their capabilities. “They’re very tough,” he said. “They’re not just very good; they’re first class.”

My apologies, Tonga -- and, yes, to President Bush as well.

Right off the heels of Iraq's intended expulsion of private-security giant Blackwater, House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman vows -- what else? -- to investigate:

“The controversy over Blackwater is an unfortunate demonstration of the perils of excessive reliance on private security contractors. The Oversight Committee will be holding hearings to understand what has happened and the extent of the damage to U.S. security interests.”

For more on Blackwater, see the Brookings Institution's P.W. Singer, one of the foremost scholars of the private-military revolution, blogging over at TPMm pal Noah Shachtman's Danger Room.

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Following a Baghdad shootout yesterday that left at least nine civilians dead, security-contractor giant Blackwater will no longer be permitted to operate in Iraq, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

The Interior Ministry's decision is likely to be a source of friction between the U.S. Embassy and Iraq. Not only does Blackwater guard many important U.S. officials there, but the embassy is unlikely to want a precedent established that allows the Iraqi government to kick out U.S. contractors for excessive use of force.

Yesterday's incident involved an insurgent attack on a State Department convoy in the Sunni neighborhood of Mansour in western Baghdad. Blackwater personnel guarding the motorcade returned fire -- "to defend themselves," according to a State Department official quoted by The Washington Post. A Post reporter on the scene in Mansour witnessed Blackwater's Little Bird helicopters "firing into the streets." Almost immediately, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the company's license to operate in Iraq would be revoked.

However, it's unclear how the Interior Ministry would expel Blackwater. Unlike other private U.S. security firms in Iraq, as of May, Blackwater hadn't registered with the Iraqi government to operate in Iraq. The Coalition Provisional Authority -- the now-defunct occupational government -- issued a decree in 2004 (pdf) immunizing security contractors from Iraqi prosecution and placing their operations under the jurisdiction of U.S. authorities.

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All right, we've got the official accounting about the "36 nations" cited last night by President Bush "who have troops on the ground in Iraq." And it still doesn't add up.

According to a National Security Council official, our tally of 34 was slightly off. We had been including the U.S. as a contributor to MNF-I, and we had forgotten the island nation of Tonga. Additionally, the White House relied on two other nations contributing forces to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq -- Canada and New Zealand -- in addition to the Figians. So there you have it: 26 in MNF-I; seven in the Nato non-combat force; and three guarding UNAMI. Thirty-six!

Only... not. First, Canada withdrew its single soldier to UNAMI in June. (New Zealand does contribute its own soldier -- that's soldier, singular -- to UNAMI, along with, one hopes, bootleg DVDs of Flight of the Conchords.) Second, the aforementioned CRS report (pdf) notes that Tonga has withdrawn its force from Iraq; and, accordingly, MNF-I no longer includes Tonga on its list of coalition members. Additionally, globalsecurity.org isn't sure whether Hungary has anyone in Iraq as part of the Nato force. (No one's answering the phones at the Hungarian embassy in Washington, either.) And, lest we forget, Iceland is sending its press aide -- apparently not really a soldier -- home from Baghdad on October 1.

But assume the White House is correct on Hungary. And also concede that Iceland isn't out yet. Still, by the accounting of the White House, at least two of the nations the president cited last night aren't in Iraq in any capacity anymore.

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We had come so close to finding 34 of President Bush's 36 countries with troops in Iraq. But now it appears we won't be at 34 for long: next month, Iceland, part of the NATO mission to Iraq, is pulling out its one lone soldier. From the Iceland Review, last week:

Foreign Minister Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir has decided to remove an Icelandic Crisis Response Unit (ICRU) member from a NATO training program for the Iraqi army in Baghdad next month, causing disappointment among NATO leaders.

The ICRU member has been working in Baghdad for the last two years, primarily as a media representative, and will cease working there October 1, Morgunbladid reports.

(Thx to TPM Reader HT.)

About that NATO mission to Iraq: how large is the contribution from member countries? According to a June report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service, it's... less than robust.

The State Department's last weekly Iraq update lists six non-MNF-I NATO countries on the ground (sorta) in Iraq: Slovenia, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Iceland and Portugal. It says there are seven, however, and judging from CRS, State may be forgetting Hungary. (For shame!) If so, that gets us to the magic number of 34 countries on the ground in Iraq. (Alas, GlobalSecurity.org casts doubt on whether the Hungarians made it over there.) We're almost to 36, Mr. President!

So, according to CRS, what are those countries providing to Iraq? Here goes.

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Let's clarify a bit about the Iraq coalition. President Bush last night thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." We count 25 of them (including, um, us) as part of Multinational Force-Iraq, most of whom have a tiny presence "on the ground"; six nations that have a non-MNF-I presence as part of a Nato mission that mostly takes place outside of Iraq; and then brave Fiji, which helps protect the United Nations mission. (Also mostly outside Iraq.)

Multinational Forces-Iraq lists 25 members of the coalition. (We list them after the jump.) Nearly all of them have minuscule numbers of troops devoted to the Iraq mission, for a total of only 11,732 . The most substantial non-U.S. troop contribution, from the UK, pulled back from Basra earlier this month to assume the non-combat "overwatch" role that General Petraeus believes that the U.S. can adopt at some as-yet-undefined point in the (far) future. Others are pulling out: the Danes, proud contributors of 470 troops in Iraq, have said they would withdraw in August, but that seems not to have happened yet. South Korea is expected to get out at the end of the year. Famous ex-members of the Coalition include Singapore, Honduras, the Netherlands, Ukraine and the Philippines, as well as major partners like Spain and Italy.

But wait! Italy and the Netherlands are listed on the State Department's latest weekly Iraq status report (pdf) as being part of the Nato contribution to Iraq. What Nato contribution?

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It's demeaning that we have to do this. But since President Bush keeps lying about the size of the coalition in Iraq, we have to. Last night, the president thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." To which the Washington Post sighs:

But the State Department's most recent weekly report on Iraq said there are 25 countries supplying 11,685 troops -- about 7 percent of the size of the U.S. forces.

It would be funny if it weren't designed to mislead the American people about the way the international community contributes to the American mission in Iraq. But Bush is right that there are more than 25 countries contributing fighters in Iraq -- you know, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Emirate of Blackwater....

Seriously, the State Department report (pdf, page 31) lists the 25, and then ticks the number up to 33 by adding the U.S., Fiji, and "seven Nato countries" that aren't -- aren't -- a part of Multinational Forces-Iraq: Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey and Slovenia. Yes, you read that right: State says seven but only lists six.

The final three? We've got calls out to the State and Defense Departments, and we'll let you know who our mystery nations are when they tell us.

I don't have half the brainpower necessary for economics reporting, but luckily, the Media Consortium's Brian Beutler does. Beutler examines the statistics cited by Amb. Ryan Crocker during his testimony this week, and finds that -- somehow! -- they don't really add up to the success story that Crocker related:

Perhaps Crocker's single biggest claim during his two days on Capitol Hill was this: "The IMF estimates that economic growth will exceed 6 percent for 2007." It's a true statement as far as it goes, but the International Monetary Fund's Executive Board reported the figure with less enthusiasm. "Economic growth has been slower than expected," the IMF fretted, "mainly because the expected expansion of oil production has not materialized."

Indeed, it's typical for a country as damaged as Iraq to see its economy fluctuate wildly, resulting in spurts of growth much more substantial than 6 percent.

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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.

Last month, Freedom's Watch, a conservative group dedicated to urging public support for the Iraq War and the president's surge, began its campaign of TV, radio and Web ads. But the $15 million, five-week blitz was just the beginning to a campaign that's seemingly as open-ended as the Iraq War itself. And that's thanks largely to the financial support of billionaire Sheldon Adelson, reports the National Journal's Peter Stone (not online).

"Sources say that the group has lined up commitments of almost $200 million (from Adelson and others) to finance its operations," he reports, noting that "the group has several A-list donors," but "Adelson by far has the most firepower."

Forbes recently listed Adelson as the sixth richest person in the world, with $26.5 billion in assets. He's made his fortune mainly off of hotel-casinos and owns the Las Vegas Sands company. Stone reports that Adelson doesn't serve on Freedom's Watch's board of directors, but "the group’s chairman is Bill Weidner, president of the Las Vegas Sands."

Also on that board of directors, of course, are Ari Fleischer, and Brad Blakeman, both veterans of the Bush White House (spokesman and scheduler, respectively), who've served as the public faces of the group.

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."

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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.

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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."

Something that's passed without notice in the hearings today and yesterday is that Gen. Petraeus cheered Iraq "becoming one of the U.S.'s larger foreign military sales customers." According to the general, Iraq has committed $1.6 billion already to the Pentagon's Foreign Military Sales program, and might commit another $1.8 billion before the end of the year. A few minutes ago, he told Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) that "we have to push the [foreign military sales] system" to get more weapons into Iraqi hands.

This is a pattern with Petraeus. When he commanded the training and equipping of Iraqi forces, almost 200,000 pistols and AK-47s intended for the Iraqi security forces went missing. Petraeus forthrightly said recently that he didn't think having safeguards in place to ensure the weapons were in the proper hands was as important as simply getting a slow-moving Pentagon bureaucracy to ship the weapons to Iraq. That decision, however, was one of several that has occasioned an unprecedented Pentagon Inspector General mission to Iraq to determine the extent of mismanagement and corruption -- and possibly even criminal activity -- in the sprawling logistics system.

Now, Petraeus seems to be saying that the Iraqi security forces need a surge of U.S. weaponry. It's admirable that Petraeus is trying to rapidly increase the competence and capability of the Iraqi security forces -- the lack of which makes up a large part of bipartisan criticism of the war. But what safeguards does Petraeus have in place to ensure that those guns won't end up on the black market, or in the hands of U.S. enemies?

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.

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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.

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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.

Out of all the slides and talk of statistics yesterday, there's one in particular that's stood out. This one:

In it, Gen. Petraeus has helpfully indicated the ambiguity of the timing of future troop reductions with tiny question marks. 2008 or beyond? Who knows?

In an analysis, Paul Richter of The Los Angeles Times says the takeaway is clear:

The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.

The plans outlined by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would retain a large force in the country -- perhaps more than 100,000 troops -- when the time comes for Bush to move out of the White House in January 2009....

But while Petraeus and Crocker made the administration's general goals clear, it left uncertain their thinking on a variety of key issues.

Nothing new was said, for example, on how the administration intends to try to break apart the governmental gridlock in Baghdad, which has obstructed the administration's plan to bring about national reconciliation through agreements by the national government. Does the administration want to try to overhaul the badly balkanized government, or empower the local governments?

Also unanswered was what course the administration will take if it turns out that fewer U.S. forces are unable to maintain the current level of security when the five brigades leave by summer.

Those issues most likely will be left for the next president, whose new job is looking tougher all the time.

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.

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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 Times reported 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 telling The 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.

Update: You can read Crocker's opening remarks here.

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.

Update: You can see the slides here.

Update: You can read Petraeus' opening remarks here.

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.

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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.

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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 Times reports 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?

With thanks to reader RJ, here's Iraq Body Count's chart of civilian casualties during the surge, broken down by Baghdad vs. non-Baghdad; and by shooting/execution vs. car bomb deaths. IBC, which relies on verified press reports in English and in Arabic, here lists civilian deaths per day, apparently on average, for each month in 2007.

So we may not get to see the basis for General Petraeus' computations that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq. An anonymous senior military officer tells The Washington Times' Bill Gertz not to expect a paper trail when Petraeus testifies to Congress on Monday.

A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. "There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony," the officer said.

The only hard copy will be Gen. Petraeus' opening statement to Congress, scheduled for Monday, along with any charts he will use in explaining the results of the troop surge in Baghdad over the past several months.

Will the charts explain the methodology used to derive the information they contain?

(Via ThinkProgress)

As Josh wrote on TPM, getting an apples-to-apples comparison of Iraqi civilian casualties statistics -- an all-important metric to determine the success of General Petraeus' "population protection" strategy -- over the course of the past year is something of a murky endeavor. One of the most credible Iraq-casualties tabulations, crunched by the United Nations, was lost this year after the Iraqi government, embarrassed by the high reported death toll, refused the U.N. access to Health Ministry statistics.

And it's not hard to see why: here are the 2006 numbers from the U.N., month by month, versus an AP-reported month-to-month breakdown of figures compiled from the Iraqi ministries of defense, health and interior.

Jan 06: 1700 UN -- 549 Iraqi ministries

Feb 06: 2100 UN -- 545 Iraqi ministries

Mar 06: 2250 UN -- 769 Iraqi ministries

Apr 06: 2200 UN -- 686 Iraqi ministries

May 06: 2669 UN -- 932 Iraqi ministries

Jun 06: 3149 UN -- 885 Iraqi ministries

Jul 06: 3590 UN -- 1062 Iraqi ministries

Aug 06: 3009 UN -- 769 Iraqi ministries

Sep 06: 3250 UN -- 1099 Iraqi ministries

Oct 06: 3600 UN* -- 1288 Iraqi ministries

Nov 06: 3400 UN -- 1846 Iraqi ministries

Dec 06: 2800 UN -- 1927 Iraqi ministries

If I've made any mistakes in compiling this, I'll adjust as necessary. But here you can see the discrepancy in determining how many Iraqis died each month in 2006 alone. In February, for instance, the violence in the wake of the Samarra mosque bombing killed at least 130 Iraqis in one day, making the Iraqi government's count of 535 casualties that entire month rather dubious.

*An Associated Press story from November 2006 pegged the October 2006 UN figure at 3709. There is no explanation for the discrepancy between the UN reported number and the AP account.

We've been writing for a while about the difficulty of getting clear and consistent measurements about security in Iraq. The Government Accountability Office stated this week that there hasn't been a measurable decline in attacks on civilians over the course of the surge, something that General David Petraeus' command sharply disputes. Making matters more complicated, the Pentagon's quarterly Iraq reports have recently taken to revising its earlier estimates of sectarian killings without indicating what prompted the change. The statistical confusion is likely to play a prominent role in Petraeus' Congressional testimony next week.

So it's significant that Petraeus gave a subtly defiant interview to the Boston Globe's Charles Sennott. Petraeus, true to form, attaches qualifiers and caveats to his assessments, but he hits his main points hard: his is a "solid plan" that is achieving results, from the pacification of Anbar province to the increased capability of Iraqi Army and police forces that "hold" neighborhoods in Baghdad. He implies that the Sunni tribal turn against al-Qaeda is a turn for "reconciliation" with the Shiite-led Iraqi government, something that his subordinate commanders have doubted.

Unlike his interview last weekend with the Australian, though, he cites no statistics about overall declines in casualties. Instead, he pointedly states that "what our troopers have achieved is measurable and important." It's a loaded statement, implying that to question the statistics distributed by Multinational Forces-Iraq is to criticize the troops on the ground. That's something the GAO took great care not to do in its report this week, writing that the troops have "performed courageously under dangerous and difficult circumstances."

Something else to look for: Petraeus appears to anticipate a question about whether all or most of Baghdad has, in fact, been made secure. (He told the Australian that sectarian violence was down 75 percent in the capitol.)

As we have demonstrated through the employment of the forces that we have, we do not necessarily have to secure every part of Baghdad at once -- this can and has been done in stages. As the security situation in an area improves, forces are required to hold the gains that we have made. Over time some of those forces can be local police units working with the Iraqi Army and Coalition Forces in Joint Security Stations.

That sounds like Petraeus is conceding that Baghdad remains, at least in parts, unsecured. He's never explicitly said otherwise, and he would understandably resist being expected to solve the capitol's problems in less than a year. Indeed, to me and to other reporters, he's discussed how the Iraqis need to come to terms with an "acceptable" level of violence: after all, no city of 7 million can be completely secure. But expect Congress to grill him on what he's actually saying about the levels of security throughout Baghdad -- and how he measures it.

Former Washington D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey, the lead police expert on the Jones commission, knows all about community suspicion of the boys in blue. Yet, he told Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the distrust he saw directed at the Iraqi National Police was stunning. Maybe that shouldn't be surprising: corrupt and brutal, and responsive to an Interior Ministry that the commission describes as a "11-story powder keg of factions," the 25,000 member force, Ramsey disclosed, is a stunning 85 percent Shiite and only 13 percent Sunni.

The commission recommends disbanding the Iraqi National Police and reconfiguring it under the Interior Ministry. But commission members didn't really address how any improvement in the police force is possible absent a drastic overhaul in the Interior Ministry, which the Maliki government rejected today. Of course, the ministry is the way it is because Shiites and Sunnis remain unreconciled, so we're back to the central problem of sectarian reconciliation. Until that's magically fixed, it looks like you occupy a country with the Iraqi National Police you have, not the Iraqi National Police you might want or wish to have at a later time.

In this morning's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the independent commission on Iraqi security forces led by retired General James Jones expressed a great deal of confidence in the Iraqi Army's growing combat capabilities and far less on those of the local police and National Police units.

But Jones wanted to make a broader point as well, one that doesn't directly relate to the state of the Iraqi security forces. Citing the "tactical successes" of the surge, Jones said, it's possible to start moving toward reduced combat missions for U.S. forces in 2008.

It's somewhat beyond the commission's purview, which had to do only with the conditions of the Iraqi military and police. But Jones said the "observable progress" of the Iraqi Army led to "some options" for U.S. forces in Iraq by early 2008, especially due to the (dubious) reduction in violence as the result of the surge. Specifically, the U.S. should -- however slowly -- begin to transition into a "strategic overwatch" role, protecting Iraqi borders and major infrastructure. Even though the Iraqi police face tremendous difficulties and the army won't be ready to act independently for at least a year, the U.S.'s "force footprint should be justified to represent an expeditionary capability and to combat the permanent-force image of an occupying power," Jones testified.

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A shame that the Washington Post ran this piece on A16, but Karen DeYoung does yeoman work in pointing out how the measurements don't add up for the Bush administration's repeated claim that violence is down in Iraq, something that we've reported on here and here. I've been stonewalled on how the military defines a "sectarian" attack, but DeYoung gets a frustrated U.S. intelligence official to explain:

Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."

"Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti."

The cherry-picking has resumed, and apparently by design. There isn't one central clearinghouse for storing data on enemy attacks, which helps explain why the leaked draft of the GAO report on Iraqi benchmarks found entire "agencies" disagreeing about whether violence was down.

In an e-mailed response to questions last weekend, an MNF-I spokesman said that while trends were favorable, "exact monthly figures cannot be provided" for attacks against civilians or other categories of violence in 2006 or 2007, either in Baghdad or for the country overall. "MNF-I makes every attempt to ensure it captures the most comprehensive, accurate, and valid data on civilian and sectarian deaths," the spokesman wrote. "However, there is not one central place for data or information. . . . This means there can be variations when different organizations examine this information."

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Retired Marine General James Jones, a former NATO commander, helmed an independent inquiry into the state of the Iraqi security forces, and his top line is simple enough: the Army is incrementally improving, while the police are a shambles. Forces under the control of the Defense Ministry, "one of the better-functioning agencies" in Iraq are getting better at counterinsurgency, but they won't be able to operate without U.S. assistance for the next year to 18 months. Meanwhile, the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry, which controls the police, is an obstacle to a competent, non-sectarian force. (Read Jones' conclusions here.)

The Iraqi police are improving at the local level predominantly where the ethnic makeup of the population is relatively homogenous and police are recruited from the local area. Police forces are hampered by corruption and dysfunction within the Ministry of Interior. In some areas, they have been vulnerable to infiltration, and they are often outmatched in leadership, training, tactics, equipment, and weapons by the terrorists, criminals and militias they must combat. The rate of improvement must be accelerated if the Iraqi police are to meet their essential security responsibilities. ...

The Ministry of Interior is a ministry in name only. It is widely regarded as being dysfunctional and sectarian, and suffers from ineffective leadership. Such fundamental flaws present a serious obstacle to achieving the levels of readiness, capability and effectiveness in police and border security forces that are essential for internal security and stability in Iraq.

And with that, official recognition catches up with the facts on the ground.

Much more on the report soon. Jones testifies this morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Not every aspect of the GAO study on the Iraq benchmarks contradicts the administration line. Indeed, on one unfulfilled benchmark -- the persecution of Sunni military commanders -- the White House and the GAO see eye to eye. But the response amounts to the same thing. Instead of insisting that the benchmark is met and the strategy is working, the White House admits that it's not, but curiously insists that it doesn't need to do anything differently. We just need to stay the course.

The benchmark measures sectarian interference with security operations. According to the GAO, Shiite politicians have pursued groundless accusations of wrongdoing against Sunni officers that the U.S. considers trustworthy. In some cases, "questionable judicial warrants" against officers are issued by "the Office of Commander in Chief" -- otherwise known as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The persecution means that the Iraqi security forces' "formal command structure is compromised by influential sectarian leaders linked to the security ministries."

Funny thing: the White House doesn't disagree.

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The Iraqi government fully met only three out of 18 benchmarks, according to the GAO. Among them: the parliament has rules in place to protect the rights of ethnic and religious minority members. Sure, it's not the sexiest benchmark -- it's no militia demobilization or constitutional reform -- but in a multiethnic country without a democratic tradition, it's important.

Only one problem: the GAO felt compelled to point out -- over the objections of the State Department -- that minority protections don't exist outside the parliament hall.

According to the United Nations, attacks against religious and ethnic minorities continued unabated in most areas of Iraq, prompting these communities to seek ways to leave the country. The conflicts reportedly bear the mark of sectarian polarization and "cleansing" in neighborhoods formerly comprised of different religions.

Now, that's not part of the benchmark, which just looks at minority protections within the government. Why include general information about the plight of Iraq's minorities here?

[W]e believe it is important to provide some context of minority rights in Iraq. Iraqi legislators we interviewed insisted that the situation in their communities has a direct bearing on their work in the legislature, their freedom of movement to and from the legislature, and their ability to engage fully in Iraq [sic] political life.

That sounds a lot like GAO is saying the benchmark is a hollow one.

One question: how is it that GAO can judge sectarianism in attacks on ethnic and religious minorities but not against either Sunnis or Shiites?

Sometimes the Pentagon presents misleading Iraq data. Other times, it minimizes its own findings, as it does on one of the most controversial aspects of the Iraqi training effort: endemic corruption and sectarianism in the Ministry of the Interior.

Interior, which controls the police, is the sharpest weapon of Shiite power in Iraq. Here's the Government Accountability Office's report:

[M]ilitia influence affects every component of the Ministry of the Interior, especially in Baghdad and in other key cities, according to DOD. This influence, along with corruption and illegal activity, constrains progress in the development of Ministry of Interior forces.

Notice that attribution: "according to DOD." But look at the relevant section of the June 2007 Pentagon quarterly report on Iraq (pdf), beginning at page 31. The top line is what GAO describes, on both the question of militia infiltration and corruption. But then the Defense Department explains it away:

The [Ministry of the Interior] still struggles with internal corruption, and the ministry made continued efforts this quarter to address this problem. Key to these efforts is effective investigations when allegations appear to have credibility.

In support of that statement, the report lists over 1900 internal corruption investigations which have resulted in the firing of nearly 900 ministry employees. But, according to a memo from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, those investigations don't exactly go anywhere.

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Pretty much anyway you slice it, these are great times for defense lawyers.

Iraq contractors are feeling the heat of Department of Justice scrutiny, and are turning to some heavy-hitters to help them out, The National Law Journal reports.

During the past year, several defense contractors hired to help rebuild Iraq have come under federal investigation or faced litigation for allegedly defrauding the government. Government officials estimate that $10 billion in Iraq-related contracts are unaccounted for and may have been lost to fraud or other misconduct.

Currently, about 80 federal investigations looking into contract fraud are under way, and more than 20 cases have been referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution, according to congressional testimony offered by federal auditors. During the last three years, contract fraud investigations have yielded 10 arrests, five indictments, five convictions and two imprisonments.

An "army" of heavy-weight lawyers are giving their contractor clients sage advice like: "don't throw records away" and "don't conspire with people to cook their testimony." The advice might be working, because, so far, the hundreds of DOJ investigations have yielded fewer than a dozen indictments.

Pentagon officials are angry with the Government Accountability Office, whose recent report disputes that the surge has reduced sectarian violence in Iraq. And with good reason: over the weekend, General David Petraeus boasted to The Australian that sectarian violence was down a staggering 75 percent in Baghdad, a "hugely important" figure he surely wants to trumpet before Congress next week. An anonymous DOD official insisted to the Washington Post that the GAO is "factually incorrect" on this important metric, but provided no evidence for the claim. And that fits a pattern for the Pentagon's gripes with the GAO.

Repeatedly throughout the document (pdf), the GAO takes a note of caution on sectarian violence, which is the thirteenth benchmark. It says it's "not clear" whether the violence is in fact down, since "measuring such violence requires understanding the perpetrator's intent, which may not be known." Recall that in its July report, the White House plainly stated that "trends supplied over time by [the U.S. military command in Iraq] demonstrate a decrease in sectarian violence, particularly in Baghdad, since the beginning of [the Baghdad security plan, known in Arabic as] Operation Fardh al-Qunun."

The GAO instead suggests substituting a measurement of total civilian casualties. And there the news isn't so good: the GAO reports that the "average number of daily attacks remained about the same over the last six months." A graph, based on data from the U.S. military command in Iraq, shows that from February to July -- the lifetime of the surge so far -- average daily attacks on civilians hover at a bit higher than 20 per day (click to enlarge):

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For the Bush administration's PR push on Iraq, this is the storm before next week's calm. Next Monday and Tuesday, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testify before Congress on the surge, where they'll make an argument for continuing the war instead of giving an independent assessment of how the war is going. That's the relatively favorable part for the White House. But before Petraeus and Crocker arrive in Washington, the administration will have to deal with two less pleasant spectacles: a Government Accountability Office report concluding that the war has met only three of 18 benchmarks for progress; and an independent commission's finding that the Iraqi police need a radical overhaul.

So how does the administration get past the two reports and seed the bed for Petraeus and Crocker's testimony? Introduce the concept of "mini-benchmarks" -- statistics that support the administration.

Today's Los Angeles Times points out that the objective of the surge -- reducing violence to provide "breathing room" for sectarian reconciliation -- has failed. Iraqi politics, as even Michael O'Hanlon concedes, is a shambles, with Sunnis boycotting an increasingly insular Maliki government and a "parliamentary coup" led by Ayad Allawi waiting in the wings. But in the middle of the LAT's piece, Crocker is quoted urging people to pay attention to the indicators that truly matter -- not the ones where the administration and the war effort fall short.

"There are . . . if you will, mini-benchmarks where things are happening," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Aug. 21. Crocker cited Anbar province, west of Baghdad, where violence has dropped substantially since Sunni Arab leaders there began working with U.S. and Iraqi security forces.

"We've seen that phenomenon in different forms move through different parts of the country," Crocker said. "It's the steps these tribes, communities, individuals are taking. . . . You've got to keep an eye on that too."

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