It appears Bush administration officials have finally figured out a way to demonstrate progress in stemming violence in Iraq: change the way violence is measured.
U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren’t counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.
Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. “If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory,” he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.
Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population – one of the surge’s main goals.
Typical. If we use one of the principal methods of attacks in Iraq to measure violence in the streets, then the terrorists win. Better to discount the bombings and congratulate ourselves for a job well done.
The administration, for example, notes with pride the reduction in bodies being dumped daily on the streets of Baghdad, which officials consider sectarian murders. The administration ignores, however, that the death toll from explosive attacks is going up, from 323 in March, the first full month of the security plan, to 365 through April 24. (As McClatchy explained, “In that same period, the number of bombings has increased, as well. In December, there were 65 explosive attacks. That number was unchanged in January, but it rose to 72 in February, 74 in March and 81 through April 24.”)
“Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them,” said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.
And as it turns out, those aren’t the only books being cooked.
USA Today reports that Iraqi officials may be intentionally withholding data to downplay civilian casualties.
Iraq’s humanitarian crisis is “rapidly worsening,” and violence is rising despite a shift in U.S. military tactics, the United Nations said in a report Wednesday. U.N. officials also accused the Iraqi government of withholding civilian casualty figures because the data could undermine public opinion. […]
In contrast to the U.N.’s critical report, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told members of Congress Wednesday that the number of sectarian killings in Baghdad has fallen by a third since the U.S. troop buildup began in January.
The U.N. assessment, which addressed violence broader than just sectarian killings, did not provide numbers on civilian casualties because Iraqi officials refused to share the data, said Ivana Vuco, a U.N. human rights official who helped author the study. Previous U.N. reports had relied primarily on data from the Iraqi health ministry and the Baghdad morgue.
Asked to explain the reasoning behind withholding the data, Iraqi officials expressed concerns that people would “construe” civilian casualties to “portray the situation negatively.”
What do you know, Iraqi officials and Bush administration officials spin reality exactly the same way.