Numb and Number
I’m a sucker for Iraq metrics, and Kevin Drum has done some wicked-useful graphing lately. Me, I’m a table guy. I like rows and columns of numbers, by which I mean – I can’t make graphs for shit. Kevin also makes the most important point:
. . . the various data series aren’t available in a consistent form for the entire course of the war.
Actually, that’s the other crucial point. The crucial point is
Unfortunately, there’s simply no reliable data series for civilian casualties over the course of the war, and the data for this year in particular gives every indication of being massaged to within an inch of its life (intra-Shiite violence doesn’t count, car bomb fatalities don’t count, al-Qaeda attacks against Sunni tribes don’t count, the figures change mysteriously from one report to the next, the supposedly lower numbers for August are classified, etc. etc.) We do have figures released by various Iraqi ministries, but we don’t have a consistent series of ministry numbers for the past four years, and in any case the numbers for 2007 don’t show any decline at all between spring and summer. So that doesn’t suggest any surge-related decrease in violence either.
Bottom line: you should be skeptical of any claims about reductions in violence unless they take seasonality into account. So far, though, I haven’t seen any credible claims of reduced violence that even mention seasonality, let alone adjust for it. That should tell you something.
Okay, I think that’s actually a couple of crucial points. But they are, indeed, crucial. They’re bullshitting us.
Comment by the talking dog —
September 4, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
Okay, I think that’s actually a couple of crucial points. But they are, indeed, crucial. They’re bullshitting us.
To be fair, they’re not bullshitting US. We KNOW what they’re up to. They’re mostly bullshitting each other; the plan, of course, is to bullshit Congress, or more accurately, to bullshit the media into embarrassing Congress (specifically the easily embarrassed Harry and Nancy) into buying the bullshit, or fear of the consequences of not buying it… though Congress’s own investigative arm (and my former employer) the GAO calls bullshit today, noting that only 3 of the designated benchmarks have been fully met, and only 4 more even partially, with 11 not at all, and yet, and yet… the kabuki show will just go on, unabated.
Heck, we’ll be bombing Tehran before you know it.
To be honest, we really do have the government we deserve (though, once again, I don’t recall knife-raping a nun.)
Comment by Decline and Fall —
September 5, 2007 @ 2:10 am
The bullshitting is purely for their political base, who will believe anything the great leader tells them, espercially when it comes to perceived progress on Iraq.
The Administration doesn’t believe for a second that any of the war critics will buy it but that’s OK, because they’ve got Fox News and most of the rest of the media ready to repeat their talking points for them.
I’d insert a comment about how pyrrhic a “merely rhetorical” victory must be for them, but I’m not convinced that they were ever serious about any other kind of victory.
Comment by Nell —
September 5, 2007 @ 5:32 pm
we really do have the government we deserve
That’s hard to take. So hard that I just have to reject it. As in “who’s ‘we’, white man?”
Big, institutional conditions of rot that go way beyond what even a huge, organized movement could correct in the time remaining.
Comment by NYT —
September 6, 2007 @ 2:05 am
How difficult would it have been for the Democrats in Congress to commision some studies like the Lancet study to accurately measure this?
It probably would have cost a few million dollars at most, if they had been at all interested.
You can’t defraud an honest man.