No Shiite Sherlock

by emptywheel

Kudos to Spencer Ackerman for FOIAing the rationale behind General Petraeus' Magic September numbers out of the military. Generally, Ackerman explains that the numbers for sectarian violence don't count attacks on same sect people or on the Iraqi government.

Interestingly, attacks against "same-sect civilians," U.S. forces, the Iraqi government or Iraqi security forces "are excluded and not defined as sectarian attacks." So even though Sunni insurgent groups loathe the Shiite-controlled government, insurgent attacks on it aren't considered sectarian violence.

And he notes that the kind of violence that is quickly homogenizing Baghdad's neighborhoods--executions, murders, and kidnapping--may not count either, if the Shiite officials doing the counting don't want it to count.

For executions, murders and kidnappings -- situations in which sectarianism may be difficult to determine -- MNF-I says it uses "host nation" reporting in addition to its own. Many media and non-governmental organizations consider information on casualties released by the Iraqi ministries to be self-serving, misleading or contradictory.

Some important kinds of violence aren't included in this total: as Ackerman points out, Sunni attacks on Shiite policemen wouldn't count, organized Shiite violence that the government likes to pretend is policing doesn't count, and Shiite-Shiite violence, which is increasing in the South, doesn't count.

That's part of the gimmick of calling this ethno-sectarian violence, I guess, rather than just labeling it a civil war.

Comments

[Frederick]

Hey Laura can David come over and play ?
Please please please ?
Can we have cookies too ? Please !
Not until you stop killing all your little friends georgie !
Oh Laura your too strict , aren't you my little friend too ?
He he he

[tedb]

I think it's really cool that they know who is doing all the killings so they can classify them. How do they do that?

[hmbnancy]

I am getting the message, violent deaths don't count. So the logical conclusion is that violence is down.

[emptywheel]

hmbnancy

Well, it's a little more complicated than that. Somehow, violence that allows you to claims AQ Iraq is more dangerous than Shiite militias still counts. But otherwise, yeah, down is good.

[bmaz]

Before the mind numbingly mind boggling media got their ganglia caught up in the Petraeus dog and pony statistics show over progress in Iraq; almost everybody agreed that the ONLY real measure of success was political progress. What happened to that semi-reasonable paradigm?

[orionATL]

funny, funny headline.

[Neil]

ii laughed my ass off. no shiit sherlock. he he. good one ew.

[Neil]

I hadn't seen this. Bush's Yale transcript

[freepatriot]

figures lie, and liars figure

statistics can be used to prove anything

23% of all people know that

did we learn nothing from the sacrifice of Daniel Ellsberg ???

[serena1313]

Someone might want to inquire if that same accounting standard applies to the deaths of our US troops?

We already know they do not count Iraqi deaths nor the number of attacks so what makes us believe they accurately report the number of US deaths?

Injuries exceed 36,000 -- but other sources placed US soldiers, serious injured around 50,000 - 75,000 or more, six to eight months ago.

[Bill Durbin]

Maybe Ackerman can push a little harder and find out who, from the Security Council, "suggested" this cute little metric to the good General. Any other votes for Steven Hadley?

[joanneleon]

About that Blackwater company and the alleged smuggling of arms: Would this be something that would have fallen under the purview of Valerie Plame's organization and Brewster Jennings?

This is sort of off topic, but not really. The "insurgents" have to be getting their weapons somewhere. Now there is a story on yahoo news, and a diary on dkos about Blackwater and some type of Iran/Contra arrangement with the PKK.

There are so many paths that lead to other things in that Plame case, IMHO.