Calculating Death

Earlier this week I posted about the fishy civilian casualty figures coming out of Iraq. First, we had a significant decline, then, we learned the decline had been grossly miscalculated. How was this possible? They cooked the books. Incredible.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - 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.

When things aren't going your way, when progress needs to be spun, when reality just won't play along, when death is just a set of inconvenient figures, change the game. It's a balance sheet move that would make the Enron's and WorldCom's of this world proud.

Tally more.