ISG Report: Bush Administration ‘Significantly Underreporting The Violence In Iraq’
ISG Report: Bush Administration ‘Significantly Underreporting The Violence In Iraq’
The Bush administration has consistently bashed the media for ignoring all the “good news” in Iraq. In Oct. 2003, President Bush said, “And, listen, we’re making good progress in Iraq. Sometimes it’s hard to tell it when you listen to the filter. We’re making good progress.”
But according to the Iraq Study Group (ISG) report released yesterday, the Bush administration has actually been filtering out the bad news in Iraq by underreporting violence “in order to suit the Bush administration’s policy goals.” From pp. 94-5:
In addition, there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases. A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.
In addition to manipulating statistics, the administration has spent $20 million “for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.”
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48 Responses to “ISG Report: Bush Administration ‘Significantly Underreporting The Violence In Iraq’”
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I think he believes Orwells’ “1984″ is a how-to manual, not a cautionary tale.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:20 pmEverything is under reported. You know like leaving the cost of the Iraq war out of the National Budget and only using Emergency Funding.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:21 pmAll lies - all the time. They never stop do they? It truly amazes me that when bush goes to church, the good lord actually allows him to stay. I would think with all the stuff bush brough to the world, God might want to give him a “time out”. Bush can think about what he has done to our beloved country. If your gonna start a war, at least be honest with those who bare the largest burden (Pat Tillman). This is pathetic.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:23 pmReminds me of how the government kept trying to paint a rosy picture during Viet Nam.
It didn’t work then, either.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:24 pmWhoa! Who would have thought that???
December 7th, 2006 at 3:25 pmBush not saying the truth, making up numbers? Paying $ Millions for ‘positive’ news? Naaaaawww. everything is great, right? We’re making progress, right? It’s all going just fine.
It’s all them goddam communist-liberal-progressive-dem-scum who is responsible for this. Unpatriotic cut and run pigs.
Traitors.
Anything else?
Telling the truth is hard, it’s hard work.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:26 pmOh, that liberal media!
December 7th, 2006 at 3:26 pmMakes the occasional reports of underreported / ommitted american casualties sound more believeable. I still can’t believe no one was killed in the explosions at firebase falcon (well maybe no americans, no one else gets counted right?)
Any news on any commissions to provide unheeded advice towards the mess in afghanistan?
December 7th, 2006 at 3:32 pmHow dare people question the Ministry of Truth!
After their erasures, it will be as they never existed…
December 7th, 2006 at 3:33 pmThey lie, constantly. And their diehard supporters suck it up.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:34 pmWhat a surprise.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:34 pmTypical Republican Cowards. Scared of phony gods, of gays, of strong women, of cavemen, of free thought.
Frightened into stupidity by the fear-mongering terrorists they elected.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:34 pm“Fixed the Intel, fixed the facts; leaved in denial” the perfect epitaph on Shrub’s tombstone
December 7th, 2006 at 3:41 pmHow is it possible that no one has taken a shot at this guy yet? Lets get Jodie Foster a new movie, so shes in the public eye again.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:41 pm“Stay the course”
“Stay the course”
“Stay the course”
“Stay the course”
“Stay the course”
“I never said stay the course!”
December 7th, 2006 at 3:47 pmHow is it possible that no one has taken a shot at this guy yet? Lets get Jodie Foster a new movie, so shes in the public eye again.
Comment by Vance
Let’s not encourage the martyrdom of the Boy King…
December 7th, 2006 at 3:48 pmthe president reiterates his support for the people of iraq, and, further, in comparison to his father, who killed 86,000 men, 40,000 men and 32,000 children in bush war i, president bush looks rather a piker in comparison.
now, i don’t want to melt the tar-baby here, but, your question is further evidence that the press hates america and refuses to report the good things that are happening in iraq every day.
russ…
December 7th, 2006 at 3:49 pmForward Base Falcon has already gone down the Orwellian memory hole.
If you’ve seen the photos of destroyed gear and flattened personnel trailers, it is difficult to believe no Americans were killed or injured.
If the rumor is true that 300 Americans and 175 Iraqis DIED on October 11th, and the Chimpy regime covered it up, thats going to solidify Americans against the war and for an immediate and total pullout from Iraq.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:49 pmAs everyone knows, the Bush admin has received a pass from the M$M media.
Does anyone know the names of the people that have comprised the White House Press Corp since day one?
Why are these people not publically enshrined in a sort of highly accessible internet `Hall of Shame’?
Why pin all the blame on the criminally insane Bush admin?
The press is guilty of dereliction of duty.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:49 pmvance, your question suggests a link between jodie foster, mr hinckley and the attempted assasination of president reagan. there is no relationship between the president’s father, the donations of the hinckley family to his campaigns, and the dinner held by neil bush with the hinckley’s just prior to the attempt.
to suggest a link is just the media hating america…
suzanne…
December 7th, 2006 at 3:56 pmMisrepresenting the facts and omitting things to make themselves look better?
Oh God.. Say it aint so!!
How bad is it when “Hey! the Bush administration is lying.” is a non-issue. A real shocker is if we find out he told the truth about something.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:05 pmFunny, the only Press Corpse I can think of is Helen Thomas.
And Jeffy Lube. He pretended to be a journalist while he was in the West Wing getting blown by Karl Rove and Scotty McClellan.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:05 pmWhile people were stained in blood and scared to death in Iraq, ELISABETH BUMILLER published an essay in the NYT (April 11, 2005) entitled White House Letter: President Bush’s iPod
Excerpt: With him, as usual, was his indispensable new exercise toy: an iPod music player loaded with country and popular rock tunes aimed at getting the presidential heart rate up to a chest-pounding 170 beats per minute.
Excerpt: “First, Mr. Bush’s iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by Van Morrison, whose “Brown Eyed Girl” is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably “Centerfield,” which was played at Texas Rangers games when Mr. Bush was an owner and is still played at ballparks all over America. (”Oh, put me in coach, I’m ready to play today.”)
Compare this with the following captions from photos published on April 11, 2005:
A U.S. Army tank patrols in Baghdad, Iraq Monday, April 11, 2005. Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi forces on Monday launched their biggest Baghdad raid in recent weeks, moving on foot through a central neighborhood and rounding up dozens of suspected insurgents, the military said.(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Pallbearers gather around the casket of Army Sgt. Kelly Morris during his funeral service at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery Monday , April 11, 2005, in Boise, Idaho. Morris, 24, died March 30 in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries sustained from small arms fire. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Ga. (AP Photo/The Press Tribune, Casey Dean)
An Iraqi Police officer stands by the body of a man found on a highway in Baghdad, Iraq Monday, April 11, 2005. The street cleaning worker was shot to death by passing gunmen.(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Sean Caisse, 11, poses for a photo at the Expeditionary Family Town Hall Meeting, Monday, April 11, 2005, at Scott Air Base in Ill., where kids got a chance to experience what their parents will go through when they are deployed. They has their faces painted, had photos taken and were issued dog tags. Sean’s father will soon be deploying to Iraq. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, J.B. Forbes)
U.S. Army soldiers clear a house during a raid in Mosul, Iraq Saturday, April 2, 2005. Violence still convulses the city, with attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces continuing and explosions and gunfire ripping through frigid skies almost nightly. (AP Photo/Edward Harris)
An Iraqi child watches Iraqi and US soldiers set a security perimeter around a field clinic ran by 3rd Infantry Division US soldiers in the Haifa Street district in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday April 11, 2005. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
raqi National Guard soldiers patrol the Haifa Street district in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 11, 2005. Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi forces launched their biggest Baghdad raid in recent weeks, moving on foot Monday through a central neighborhood and rounding up dozens of suspected insurgents, the military said. About 500 members of Iraq’s police and army and a “couple hundred” American soldiers swept through buildings in the Rashid neighborhood, detaining 65 suspected militants, said Lt. Col. Clifford Kent of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division.(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
An Iraqi Police officer stands by the body of a man found on a highway in Baghdad, Iraq Monday, April 11, 2005. The street cleaning worker was shot to death by passing gunmen.(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
December 7th, 2006 at 4:05 pmI feel we are on a subway going down to Hell, with no stops along the way. The conductor is in a sound-proof (and bullet-proof) cockpit, and daily he comes on the intercom to inform us of what marvelous progress we’re making. The other passengers argue about insightful things like “how long before we get there” and “it’s not my fault”, as the subway picks up speed toward it’s inevitable dead end.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:20 pmIt is very Orwellian, but you can be sure that Bush has never read, nor intends to read 1984. Maybe people working for him have ( what kind of sick bastard reads that book and says to themselves “what a splendid idea!’? Right now he’s more lie a Nero giggling at the misfortunes surrounding him, convinced that it’s going to fall on evryone else’s shoulders and that he will be vindicated as the Hero he beleives himself to be…what a wanker.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:21 pmHere’s some good news from the Bush crime family: Bush won’t be “staying the course” in his illegal criminal occupation of Iraq, he’ll be “coursing the stay…”
Here’s some more good news from the Bush crime family: Bush won’t be “stealing the oil” in Iraq, he’ll be trying to “oil the steel” in Iraq. “You know, the steel in Eye-rack is very rusty, from all that rain… ” - Bush.
Cheers.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:21 pmThe people of the father land should not question our supreme ruler about his Iraq policy. After all this is not a democracy anymore, it is a dictatorship and the decider will decide what is true and what is not. When people start to question our ruler they must be investigated to see if the are loyal to him and his loyalist. The problem with running a dictatorship is trouble makers trying to question brilliant decisions made by our glorious leader. Now be quite your peasants and follow your leader regardless of the actual facts, after all he knows best. Hail W, our great, noble, glorious leader and ultimate decider! LOL
December 7th, 2006 at 4:25 pmHey!!! How about the good news!!!???
December 7th, 2006 at 4:27 pmAbout the Shiites taking Sunni from hospitals where they have been taken after a bombing and killing them!
Oh, wait, that’s not good news, never mind.
unknown,
i appreciate the question and the comment. as our new speech-writer, a doctor nobelles, lets call him, has said:
December 7th, 2006 at 4:30 pmObviously, that deliberate underreporting helped the GOP in the last election. Truthful reporting probably would have resulted in another 8-10 House seats sliding into the Democratic column along with 1 more Senate seat.
On another subject.
John Murtha is right. Nothing new of substance is coming out of the ISG report.
http://www.cnn.com/ 2006/ POLITICS/ 12/ 07/ bush.blair/ index.html
Here Bush is linking talks with Iran about Iraq to the nuclear issue in Iran. This is exactly what the ISG said NOT to do.
Next, Bush will blame the Iranians for not cooperating. Since Bush has placed roadblocks in the path we can’t know whether Iran would cooperate regarding security conditions in Iraq or not.
This move isn’t even putting lipstick on a pig. An offer that is 100% sure to fail is worse than no offer at all because it is an insult. We saw how Iran reacted to the insult that they were 1/3 of the axis of evil. It is like Bush wants to fail. Why else would he be acting so irresponsibly? Is he really that clueless? Oh, never mind on that last part.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:43 pmThinkprogress should backup its archive and keep it as the biggest record of goverment incompetence ever registered !!!
December 7th, 2006 at 4:43 pmAnother example of the Bush/Cheney regime, aided and abetted by Rummy and his stooges in the Pentagon.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:44 pmYet, according to OLielly, Lintball and the rest, the media is too critical and too liberal — it is this administration that is too secretive and too manipulative. We have a press that squelches stories that are too harsh on Bush — and today I heard a comment from an ISG member that the congress has been far too timid in challenging Bush&Co — so we have a press that doesn’t act as the watchdog of government in its role as the fourth estate, but is complicit with them. We have representatives in congress who are not only derelict in their duty to support and defend the Constitution and the people of America, but conspire to aid and abet the president in his fraudulent administration.
Even if the ISG report is used as buttwipe, its good to see things finally being said that folks here have been screaming about for years. Validation is a good thing.
December 7th, 2006 at 5:38 pmCaption Contest:
Chimpy: I was as surprised as anyone. I mean that Tom ‘Six Months’ Fried-man wrote that ‘World is Flat’ book. Now this ISG tells me that no, it’s kind of round, like this.
December 7th, 2006 at 6:00 pm“underreporting violence “in order to suit the Bush administration’s policy goals”
This wouldn’t be the first time that facts are being fixed around the policy.
December 7th, 2006 at 6:03 pmcaption contest:
December 7th, 2006 at 6:13 pmEven after using the report, I still needed this much toilet paper this morning.
If we had any doubts…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ tom-hayden/ troops-out-oil-companies_b_35816.html
December 7th, 2006 at 7:11 pmBush sounds like every rightwing blogger I have seen, maybe a little more sane, but it’s still there.
The media isn’t reporting all the good things. What nonsence. Hear no evil see no evil is what these devils think. And they are real devils. If cars where exploding and burning everday in your city, what would you think is going on?
Retards: Those are our the enemies.
December 7th, 2006 at 7:43 pmOh I almost forgot about he “filter”. Bush thinks the same way these rightwing bloggers do “it’s hard to tell it when you listen to the filter.”
“The Filter”? Gave it a cute little name too.
Yes conservatives believe real life is a filter that pagan Christan haters made up. These people are delusional beyond recognition. I guess they get to run around cross-eyed while people die because of them. This world sucks.
December 7th, 2006 at 7:47 pmSeems like this ISG report just went in and exposed the truth. What does Karl think about all this? All the wordsmiths and “truth” engineers are being exposed for the lying, manipulating bastards they are.
December 7th, 2006 at 8:06 pmForTruth,
Sadly the media is not shoving this down Americas throat like they did Clintons schlong, that was in the news every night. Nothing about them reporting that they basically say what we knew all along, we need to secure the oil contracts, and this was not about them being able to pay for the war with profits from their oil, it’s all about BP, Exxon and Haliburton.
If the Dems don’t seriously investigate Nine Eleven, Haliburton & Cheney ethics violations, and everything else, we’re all F’ed. The dems better walk the talk they gave us to get them there.
December 7th, 2006 at 8:22 pmWhy Americans Hate Democrats — A Dialog
Just because it is such a damned good piece of writing, the following is an exerpt from Jane Smiley’s seminal piece in Slate Magazine:
The reason the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections is simple: A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey—workers and consumers. The architects of this strategy knew perfectly well that they were exploiting, among other unsavory qualities, a long American habit of virulent racism, but they did it anyway, and we see the outcome now—Cheney is the capitalist arm and Bush is the religious arm. They know no boundaries or rules. They are predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant. Lots of Americans like and admire them because lots of Americans, even those who don’t share those same qualities, don’t know which end is up. Can the Democrats appeal to such voters? Do they want to? The Republicans have sold their souls for power. Must everyone?
Progressives have only one course of action now: React quickly to every outrage—red state types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time. We have to give them more to think about than they can handle—to always appeal to reason and common sense, and the law, even when they can’t understand it and don’t respond. They cannot be allowed to keep any secrets. Tens of millions of people didn’t vote—they are watching, too, and have to be shown that we are ready and willing to fight, and that the battle is worth fighting. And in addition, we have to remember that threats to democracy from the right always collapse. Whatever their short-term appeal, they are borne of hubris and hatred, and will destroy their purveyors in the end.
Although it originally appeared shortly after the last election, I think the article is so fundamentally honest and insightful that it bears dissemination until every American has read it. You can read the whole thing here.
http://www.slate.com/id/2109218/
December 8th, 2006 at 1:47 am[…] The truth is that the Bush administration is systematically underreporting the amount of violence in Iraq. From the Iraq Study Group report, pg. 94-95: In addition, there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases…For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals. […]
December 14th, 2006 at 11:17 am[…] This excerpt is discussed in this separate Think Progress post, which is based on this article from the Washington Post. Bookmark to: […]
December 14th, 2006 at 10:25 pmI do not know how this administration can talk about progress if not only American troops continue to pay the price of Irak’s democracy but also Irakis; Every day of Irak their is a bombing in Bagdad not to add othe cities.
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