[Dean's World] Ali Eteraz: Surge Body Count Wrong

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Ali Eteraz:
Surge Body Count Wrong
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1177603135.shtml


   [1]Here is a surprise:

     WASHINGTON - 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.

     "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.

     Bush administration officials have pointed to a dramatic decline in
     one category of deaths - the bodies dumped daily in Baghdad
     streets, which officials call sectarian murders - as evidence that
     the security plan is working. Bush said this week that that number
     had declined by 50 percent, a number confirmed by statistics
     compiled by McClatchy Newspapers.

     But the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising, the
     same statistics show - up from 323 in March, the first full month
     of the security plan, to 365 through April 24.

     Overall, statistics indicate that the number of violent deaths has
     declined significantly since December, when 1,391 people died in
     Baghdad, either executed and found dead on the street or killed by
     bomb blasts. That number was 796 in March and 691 through April 24.

     Nearly all of that decline, however, can be attributed to a drop in
     executions, most of which were blamed on Shiite Muslim militias
     aligned with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Much
     of the decline occurred before the security plan began on Feb. 15,
     and since then radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered
     his Mahdi Army militia to stand down.

     According to the statistics, which McClatchy reporters in Baghdad
     compile daily from Iraqi police reports, 1,030 bodies were found in
     December. In January, that number declined 32 percent, to 699. It
     declined to 596 February and again to 473 in March.

     Deaths from car bombings and improvised explosive devices, however,
     increased from 361 in December to a peak of 520 in February before
     dropping to 323 in March.

     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.

References

   1. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17134253.htm?source=rss&channel=krwashington_nation