U.S. MILITARY FIND FAULT WITH REPORT OF GAO ON INCREASING SECTARIAN VIOLENCE

The Washington Post has a story this morning by Karen DeYoung and Ann Scott Tyson on the military's reaction to the critical GAO Report yesterday about political progress in Iraq. The generals in Iraq especially take exception to the GAO's assertion that there is no clear verifiable evidence that sectarian violence has decreased.

Write DeYoung and Tyson:

"The GAO concluded that all forms of violence remain high in Iraq -- causing senior military officials to complain that the report did not consider statistics for August, when, they said, trends in sectarian violence and the performance of the Iraqi security forces improved.

"They use the end of July as the data and evidentiary cutoff and therefore are not taking into account any gains in any of the benchmarks that may have become more clear throughout August," one official said.

"The military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Petraeus will give the official military position in testimony Monday, took particular exception to the GAO statement that a drop in sectarian attacks could not be confirmed. The final version of the report softened the draft's initial conclusion that "U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," saying instead that "measuring such violence may be difficult since the perpetrator's intent is not clearly known."

"One military official called even the revised version "factually incorrect," saying that "we absolutely disagree with their characterization of sectarian violence." Such attacks have fallen significantly this year, he said."

Note that all the military officials remain anonymous. Furthermore, note that the military gives no hard numbers. Yes, the story reports that some in the military disagree but so what? It is not enough merely to disagree, the military must give facts and figures why they disagree.

I posted recently on the increasing sectarian violence. Civilian deaths are up in August over July. Deaths of U.S. military are up for every single month over 2006. How about these facts for contradicting mere assertions that violence in Iraq has decreased?

{See the recent story from the AP reporting on the deaths of four more U.S. soldiers and 19 civilians today in Baghdad.)

As I wrote several days ago,

"Now today we have a report from Dan Yates of Reuters that there has been a spike in Iraqi civilian deaths in August.Writes Dan Yates:

""Civilian deaths from violence in Iraq rose in August, with 1,773 people killed, government data showed on Saturday, just days before the U.S. Congress gets a slew of reports on President George W. Bush's war strategy. The civilian death toll was up 7 percent from 1,653 people killed in July, according to figures from various ministries.""

"So how does George W. Bush measure progress? If the number of civilian deaths for August in Iraq is up by more than 100 from July, totalling at least 1,773 people, how can this be "progress?""