1115.org

U.S. count of Baghdad deaths excludes car bombs, mortar attacks (McClatchy Washington Bureau):

U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren’t counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country’s sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

But it eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Not included, for example, are scores of people who died in a highly coordinated bombing that leveled an entire apartment building in eastern Baghdad, a stronghold of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

This program seems to have been outsourced to Enron, which is probably very comforting for the families of car bombing and mortar victims.

(As an aside, mostly because “partisanship” seems to be the big buzz word in advance of the November elections, this is plain wrong. It’s not partisan to point that out.)

***Update by Sarabeth, 7 am on September 12***

That brave and fearless spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, who works tirelessly to expand the frontiers of truth every day, offered up this gem while refusing to explain how the military had computed its 52% decline, or what trends the military was seeing in terms of the death toll in Baghdad:

Johnson would not provide the figures used to calculate the percentages and said the military would not give detailed information about trends because it could provide “our enemy information they need to adjust their tactics and procedures to be more effective against us.”

If we tell them how many people they are killing and how, we’ll lose all the momentum we have gained in the ongoing victory to make Baghdad safer. (We no longer say “ongoing battle”. Since every battle is by definition a victory, we just say “ongoing victory”. Saves time all round. And brevity is the soul of wit.)

And, yes, Baghdad too is safer but not safe.