www.justiceblind.com

Funny Math
Matthew Robinson, PhD

President Bush is being dishonest when he claims that the “surge” of US troops in Iraq is working due to a dramatic drop in sectarian violence. In fact, Bush is relying on statistics that exclude one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians – car bombs and other explosive devices. It's funny math ...

That’s right! The President is reporting only some of the statistics with regard to deaths in Iraq.

How did Bush respond to a question about this issue? “If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory.” Get that?

As it turns out, selective presentation of statistics -- funny math -- is standard operating procedure for the White House. In November 2005, the White House released its “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” In that document, Bush spelled out the measures he would use to track success in the area of achieving security. Among them: the quantity and quality of Iraqi units; the number of actionable intelligence tips received from Iraqis; the percentage of operations conducted by Iraqis alone or with minor Coalition assistance; offensive operations conducted by Iraqi and Coalition forces; the number of contacts initiated by Coalition forces, as opposed to the enemy; and the number of car bombs intercepted and defused (http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_strategy_nov2005.html).

Notice that the number of car bombs exploded is not included? Nor are attacks on Iraqi civilians, or on US troops. Nor are their deaths. Why not? Because these are the goals of the enemy, said Bush!

Well, honest policy evaluation of the Iraq war requires that the US government assess both the benefits and the costs of our actions there. The Bush Administration seems content on focusing only on the good news, and even then it is selective in it presentation of statistics.

The good news is that the number of violent deaths in Iraq has declined significantly in Baghdad since December. The bad news? The number of bombing attacks and the number of people killed in explosive attacks in Iraq is rising; thus Bush leaves them out.

And there are other things he fails to mention. First, in April 2007, more than 100 US troops were killed, pushing the total of Bush’s war to more than 3,350 US deaths. Second, more than 100 Iraqis are killed every day!

Third, worldwide acts of terrorism up since our invasion and occupation of Iraq. The State Department’s annual report on terrorism shows a 29% increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 (due mainly to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan). There were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year versus 11,111 in 2005. Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq (excluding attacks against our troops).

Fourth, an Inspector General report shows that nearly all of the $37.4 billion appropriated by Congress for Iraqi reconstruction has now been spent. The report finds that reconstruction has been plagued by poor construction, improper design, substandard materials and lack of maintenance. Oh, and corruption is on the rise.

Anybody who’s paying attention can see that bad news outweighs the good. Thus, the war is a failed policy. So, I say, no more dead Americans for this failed war!

Instead of bringing home our loved ones, President Bush will veto the bills that will end the war. And he’ll do it four years after he declared “Mission Accomplished.”

Shame on him, and shame on us for letting him do it.