Repeating what I said before about the need for simple, straightforward indices measured by neutral parties…
Gen. Petraeus was just asked about the allegation, which I recall reading in a Paul Krugman column, that in order to sustain a claim that sectarian violence is declining, he doesn’t count killings if a person is shot in the front of the head by only in the back of the head.
The general replied that this is false. ”We have a formula for ethnosectarian violence,” he said, and it’s not that complicated. For example, “if Al Qaida bombs a neighborhood that is predominantly Shia,” they count it as sectarian violence. He didn’t say this, but I presume it follows that if Al Qaida In Iraq bombs a predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood, it doesn’t count.
If sectarian violence was going down and not being offset by some strange increase in non-sectarian violence, that would lead (check my math here) to a decrease in total Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, yes?
But if the decline in sectarian violence is being offset by an increase in non-sectarian violence, how is this evidence for great progress?
It’s not just Krugman. That item was also in the MoveOn ad and in the Washington Post, and I’m sure I saw it elsewhere as well. The sources cited that I’ve seen were off-the-record comments from Army personnel in Iraq charged with tabulating counts.
I do not understand how you leap from Petraeus’s assertion to a conclusion. In what regard do you find Petraeus a compelling witness, given his August PR flacking for the Surge and his annual statements that things are getting better in Iraq?
Given that Petraeus’s answer doesn’t exactly make sense, his denial hardly seems conclusive.
As far as I know, the story first appeared in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/05/AR2007090502466.html?hpid=topnews
Here’s all it says:
The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. “If a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian,” the official said. “If it went through the front, it’s criminal.”