For literally years now, there’s been an odd and unproductive debate that’s a bit of a tangent from the war in Iraq: has the media been exaggerating the level of violence? For too many on the right, it’s become the lynchpin of their entire defense for the administration’s policy — reporters highlight the “bad” news, which divides the country, weakens morale, and emboldens terrorists. Conditions in Iraq, they say, aren’t nearly as hellish as the media would have us believe, and the whole effort would be better off if the media would just stop all that pesky reporting.
We’ve known from the outset that the argument is pretty silly, but yesterday, the Iraq Study Group took this a step further.
The Iraq Study Group report today, in its main claim that the situation in Iraq is now “grave” and “deteriorating” would seem to offer a clue to the answer, but more specific details — providing a “slam dunk” (if we may use that phrase) on the side of the press — are found in the Intelligence section of the report near its end, starting on page 93.
There we learn, bluntly, that “there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq” by the U.S. military. “The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases,” the report continues.
Looking at one day, the report found undercounting of violent attacks by more than 1000 percent.
“A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack,” the report explained.” If we cannot deter mine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence [officially] reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence.
“Good policy,” the ISG said, “is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.”
The panel was quite specific in what it would like to see the administration do to get a more accurate picture of Iraqi violence and, in turn, have better intelligence upon which to base policy. One wonders how the administration will shoot the idea down.
Recommendation 78 counsels, “The Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense should also institute immediate changes in the collection of data about violence and the sources of violence in Iraq to provide a more accurate picture of events on the ground.”
Sounds like a perfectly good idea. Josh Marshall, noting a news report explaining that the current system was designed in a way that minimized the deaths of Iraqis, asked, “How much time do we put into determining the ‘sectarian source’ behind the death of every individual Iraqi?”
The answer, apparently, is not much. For over three years, the lack of knowledge never spurred anyone to make a change.
I’m curious how the administration might handle this one. When the ISG recommends diplomacy with countries like Iran and Syria, I understand the White House balking. I don’t agree with their reluctance, but I can at least appreciate the notion that direct negotiations with these countries is antithetical to how they view the region and the foreign policy they’ve implemented.
But why not change the way data is collected? As the ISG argues, accurately, more complete numbers, including a better reflection of the number of attacks, actually helps, not hurts. What’s the flip side? That the administration prefers not to know? That the Bush gang prefers misleading and incomplete data to a more accurate picture?