TPM Exclusive: Petraeus' Sectarian Death Count Methodology

[kpete]

Exclusive: Petraeus' Sectarian Death Count Methodology
By Spencer Ackerman - September 21, 2007, 4:44PM

In the debate over the surge, there have been a number of questions raised within the government about an important metric for understanding whether the U.S. military's strategy is succeeding -- how Multinational Force-Iraq calculates sectarian violence.

Earlier this month, David Walker of the Government Accountability Office testified that he could not "get comfortable" with General David Petraeus' methodology for determining sectarianism, considering it too inferential to be reliable. His report, echoing objections from senior intelligence officials, instead tabulated the pace of attacks on civilians and found the surge didn't appear to have a significant effect on civilian-targeted violence. However, relying on data interpreted through the MNF-I methodology, Petraeus testified that sectarian violence had fallen in Iraq to mid-2006 levels.

The actual methodology MNF-I employs has remained unknown. Until now.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed two weeks ago, MNF-I has provided TPMmuckraker with its criteria for identifying ethnic and sectarian violence. We've added the methodology to our Document Collection, and you can read it here. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/icd-methodology/


http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004266.php

[avrdream]

1. So, the numbers depend on which category each death falls into.

It looks like it is very simple for a death to be counted in many different categories, if I'm reading the document correctly. Logically, one could imagine the statistics being rigged to look like the surge had worked.

Thanks for the link.

[enlightenment]

2. Why is it only "ethno-sectarian violence" if

a Sunni is killed by a Shi'a (or in a Shi'a controlled area) and not the other way around?

What do they call it when a Sunni kills a Shi'a?

The whole methodology is premised on this assumption.

I'm confused.

[Solly Mack]

3. K/R

yeah...just so honorable.