In today’s New York Times, reporter Michael Gordon relies on questionable military statics to report that “American forces have made some headway toward a crucial goal of protecting the Iraqi population.”

Gordon’s piece fails to quote a single critic of “the methods the Pentagon used to compile its data,” misuses data from the British-based nongovernmental group Iraq Body Count to bolster the military’s statistics, misrepresents the motivation of Sunni tribes for cooperating with American forces, and ignores facts he himself has reported in the past.

The military’s contention that “violence in Iraq has dropped” is disputed by public reports and government officials. “Yesterday, David Walker, the comptroller general for the Government Accountability Office, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the methods the Pentagon used to compile its data were too subjective and inconsistent to be meaningful.”

For instance, “the Pentagon’s own data show significant changes over time in their estimates of sectarian killings.” This week, Gen. David Petraues increased the December 2006 casualty figures and argued that sectarian killings plunged by 75 percent. Some national security experts have claimed that such an increase “is completely inconsistent with the Pentagon’s own numbers.”

Gordon also failed to note that many experts within and outside the government have accused the military of cherry-picking statistics to convince Washington that American forces are achieving progress in Iraq. The military’s statistics exclude Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, “attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen,” and car bombs.

Gordon’s use of Iraq Body Count statistics to argue that the surge has “produced progress” is perhaps most egregious. Gordon notes that statistics compiled by the group show that “the number of civilians who were killed by shootings, executions and bombs has declined from January through July.” While violence did drop in all of Iraq from 67.3 deaths per day in January to 61.9 deaths per day in July, violence outside outside of Baghdad increased by 42%, from 21.3 deaths per day in January to 30.3 deaths per day in July.

Gordon also ignores the group’s warnings that their numbers “under-represent reported violence for the more recent periods” and that “despite any efforts put into the surge, the first six months of 2007 was still the most deadly first six months for civilians of any year since the invasion.”

Finally, Gordon uncritically asserts that “the infusion of more American troops encouraged Sunni tribes, including former insurgents to align themselves with American forces, providing American troops with additional allies in their struggle to establish order in Iraq.” Yet, as the AP reports, in Anbar province, where some former Sunni insurgents have cooperated with American forces, “the Sunni tribes decided to fight and retake control from al-Qaida many months before Bush decided to send an extra 4,000 Marines to Anbar as part of his troop buildup.”

Ironically, in a July article, Gordon himself admitted that Sunnis’ perception of an impending American withdrawal, not the infusion of troops, changed their attitudes about cooperating with American forces. “Many Sunnis, for their part, are less inclined to see the soldiers as occupiers now that it is clear that American troop reductions are all but inevitable, and they are more concerned with strengthening their ability to fend off threats from Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias.”

Unfortunately, today’s article is yet another in Michael Gordon’s long history of parroting the Bush administration’s unsubstantiated claims.

This entry was is filed under The Almighty Mainstream Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.