Boy that petraeus is a fudger. Stopping murderers of the wrong type and claiming otherwise.

That makes little sense to me given the way they have proceeded, the things they have concentrated on and how much easier it should be to keep sunni and shia apart as opposed to the criminals and murderers within those groups, but hey, if you have an explanation give it to me. Not to mention that since the methodology has as far as I know been consistent the trend should be consistent, even if the final number is off to some degree or another.

It also means, if they are being truthful, that the Post article was full of it, regardless of whether the arbitrary numbers are off.

You have any other pins you want to dance on?

Kieth, that’s just my point — we don’t really know what killings are sectarian (remember that stupid business about counting them one way if the bullet entered the head in the front versus the back),

I agree with Keith on this, I don’t buy the report, but maybe the Post will honor us with a source. For the record the military and Petraeus deny that is how it is calculated. They say it is simple. If they believe a Sunni killed a Shia it is counted. Or Vice Versa.

That’s wonderful and all, but then if you’re going to assign the drop in violence to the surge (and avoid the narrative fallacy, you know), wouldn’t it behoove you to account for why the drop in violence began in December of 2006 (something Petraeus himself mentioned in his confirmation hearing)?

I am claiming progress, not that it all because of the surge. In fact, have I ever claimed otherwise? I think much of my writing expressly has mentioned multiple factors. Some is improved and more consistent application of COIN, some certain things just getting better (though that is not unrelated to the first) such as in Anbar. The question is the data, not the why here. There are lots of why’s, not all of them positive. For example, both the administration and the military have acknowledged some of the drop in sectarian killings is because with the cleansing process so advanced they have been able to more easily isolate the populations from attacks.

And I still want to know why MNF-I (or O’Hanlon for that matter) can’t bring itself to count the 500 murdered Yazidis as sectarian violence. That seems pretty clear cut to me… but they don’t count car bombings as sectarian violence, much less a series of them in a minority neighborhood. And adding 500 bodies to the tally would muck up the “August was the best month evar” nonsense that’s not being tossed about, though, wouldn’t it.

They have spoken of them. They are included in the overall numbers. You disagree that they are not in the sectarian numbers. Fine. The world doesn’t look all that different to me whether you do or not. Also, the usual claim is the drop in sectarian violence is in Baghdad anyway. Nineveh is not Baghdad.

Kieth, the drop is significant, from an all time high to just above its previous yearly average. While that is good news, it’s not really indicative of any sort of grander moves.

If what you just said is true then he hasn’t cooked the books. He hasn’t claimed it proves we are “totally winning.” He is showing progress and believes that the progress merits continued follow up. What a disingenuous spinmeister!

We get that you think we should pull out and the progress doesn’t merit staying. The issue at hand is fudging numbers. O’Hanlon makes the point that I have, the evidence shows he hasn’t. You can quibble with how they assign the deaths, but my guess is the trend on sectarian violence is correct given the circumstances.

Kieth, the drop is significant, from an all time high to just above its previous yearly average. While that is good news, it’s not really indicative of any sort of grander moves.

And if Petraeus thinks we can start the drawdown in March, then he certainly thinks everything is going according to plan, despite the big high profile (and more importantly, high-casualty) attacks we don’t know are sectarian of even the mythic AQI.

What side benefits am I missing? The political reconciliation?

We doubled the number of troops in and around Baghdad, and the drop in civilian deaths there is significant. From

You’re comparing apples to oranges to peaches.

Overall rates of violence, violence in Baghdad, deaths overall, sectarian deaths.

Why talk about the side benefits of the surge. Because they are still benefits.

I think it’s ludicrous to look at what Gen. Petraeus described as “totally winning.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200709/POL20070911b.html

“I am anxious to be here when Petraeus gives his report because we want him to know, and we want Congress to know, and we want the American people to know that we don’t believe the rosy picture that he’s going to be painting,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink, said before the start of the joint House Foreign Affairs and Armed Service Committee hearing on Monday.

Petraeus didn’t paint a rosy picture. He described the complex environment for what it was, described the areas we are having success, and the remaining challenges. That’s what I expect from a progress report. This wasn’t a report to justify retreat and quiting the effort.

Plus, I still don’t buy the AQI connection. On more than one occasion, the military has claimed AQI carried out a bombing, only to issue an ignored press release months later saying that they only think it was because of how it was carried out. That’s not evidence, it’s assumption, and no basis for any sort of serious analysis.

High profile attacks always skew the numbers, and are mostly AQI.

We’ve reduced violence somewhat in Baghdad and some other provinces. The goal was Baghdad. The operations are still unfolding, and the plans/tactics are adapting.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_6785619?source=rss

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a spokesman for the U.S.-led multinational forces here, said the troop increase had been designed to give Iraqi political parties a chance to settle some of their differences.

“The surge of operations was focused on improving security in Baghdad, and we have seen some progress – not as much as we want,” Garver said. “It’s a neighborhood by neighborhood thing. But it’s progress.”

Garver acknowledged that as a result of the operations in Baghdad, militias and insurgent groups have been trying to establish networks north of the capital.

“You see attacks up north in part because it’s harder to move around Baghdad if you’re a terrorist,” Garver said. “It’s harder to bring car bombs in.”

And I still want to know why MNF-I (or O’Hanlon for that matter) can’t bring itself to count the 500 murdered Yazidis as sectarian violence. That seems pretty clear cut to me… but they don’t count car bombings as sectarian violence, much less a series of them in a minority neighborhood. And adding 500 bodies to the tally would muck up the “August was the best month evar” nonsense that’s not being tossed about, though, wouldn’t it.

Oh yeah, and on page 11 of the GAO report there is a graph showing violence… while it dropped suddenly in July, even furthering the trend (which isn’t a given, considering that Yazidi bombing event) you wind up at a level of violence, both against the troops and civilians, that is wildly above even the darkest days of late 2004, and still way above the levels of last summer.

So is a drop for a few weeks, followed by a spike, evidence of anything other than we don’t know how to really affect overall violence levels yet? I can see the case for “we don’t know if it’s working yet,” but I really don’t see the evidence for “the surge is working.”

When violence peaks in late 2006 and simply returns to its usual grind, it’s a bit tricky to claim violence is really down, rather than it just left an outlier peak.

If that is your, or the reports you are claiming disagree, issue, then it still means the data shows a decline. That is interpretation, which is what we were arguing earlier. I don’t buy that, because the surge was put in place to a large degree because things had suddenly escalated, the ISF was falling apart, etc. Those trends have been reversed. Nobody is arguing that it is lower than previous years, least of all Petraeus, so Petraeus’ critics are full of it. If you want to interpret it as being no accomplishment to have reversed that trend, or that longer term it is irrelevant, that is another argument. That is not the basis for any cooking the books complaint and you should be making that point even as you make that argument.

It is a bad argument, but it isn’t misleading or smearing him and O’ Hanlon like many are.

But seriously, one thing O’Hanlon does that I really don’t like is he discounts the mega-bombing of the Yazidis. And notice even here how he tries to downplay the ways in which violence is measured, while not actually explaining the methodological problems he has with other independent reports that disagree with his analysis (curiously, he thought the GAO report was negative… I recall being told in another comment thread here it wasn’t…). When violence peaks in late 2006 and simply returns to its usual grind, it’s a bit tricky to claim violence is really down, rather than it just left an outlier peak.

And, considering the fall back began in December — well before the surge began — I don’t see how that is indicative of its effectiveness.