[Dean's World] Dave Price: Why Is VIolence In Iraq Falling?

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
Why Is VIolence In Iraq Falling?
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1194564170.shtml


   A [1]very thorough piece from Bill Ardolino on the falling violence in
   Iraq and senior military's opinion on the causes thereof:

     "Is it the surge, is it just dumb luck, or are there a series of
     factors that all contribute towards the lessening violence in
     Iraq?" asked General Terry Wolff, the Special Assistant to the
     President and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan Policy
     Implementation on the National Security Council, in a conference
     call last Friday. Wolff and other senior military and intelligence
     officials offered a list of "complementary" factors theorized to
     have reduced the violence in interviews with The Long War Journal.

   Read the whole thing.
   I do question the validity of this estimate:

     But the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (a regional entity of the Red
     Cross) claims that 1.8 million Iraqis have relocated to other parts
     of Iraq since January, bringing the total number of internally
     displaced refugees to 2.3 million.

   My guess is these numbers are significantly exaggerated; we do not see
   the kind of massive refugee camps one would expect if 10% of the
   country's population had left their homes. More likely, those seeking
   aid from the Red Crescent make their situation sound as dire as
   possible in order to extract as much aid as possible, as is only human
   nature; recall, if you will, the [2]fraud uncovered in our own
   post-Katrina period, as well as [3]after 9/11, and add to this a
   [4]cultural tendency toward exaggeration and the inability to verify
   data due to the Hussein's disinterest in accurate record-keeping and
   thus an almost total unlikelihood of prosecution for fraudulent
   claims, and you have a situation in which it is very hard to determine
   the real numbers in this kind of situation.

References

   1. http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/11/why_the_violence_has.php
   2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11326973/
   3. http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/10/29/wtc.deaths/
   4. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE7D61731F933A15751C0A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all