Kevin Drum, apparently a more careful reader than I, gets an apples-to-apples comparison of today’s new study with the earlier Lancet study:

The difference in their estimate of total excess deaths (655,000 vs. 393,000) isn’t huge for a study with such inherent difficulties, but the difference in the violent death rate is. The Lancet study calculates that 92% of all post-invasion excess deaths were from violent causes, while WHO figures it at 38%.

Be all that as it may, The New York Times observes that “because of its timing, the study missed the period of what is believed to be the worst sectarian killings, during the latter half of 2006 and the first eight months of 2007.” The Lancet study, clearly, having been from even earlier also missed that period. So even if you have a great deal of confidence that one or the other of these studies got things right, the studies’ figures are probably badly outdated by now.

One issue this whole controversy raises relates to casualty figures from civil wars that aren’t political hot potatoes in the United States. When a study comes out in Iraq, there’s intense political pressure from one side or another (or both) to expose real and imagined methodological flaws. But what about things like the millions who’ve died recently in Congo where the studies get done in a context where nobody’s seriously trying to work the refs?

There’s an awful lot to object to in the McCain/Lieberman “The Surge Worked” op-ed. Notably, they don’t grapple with the fact that before the surge began, the surge’s proponents outlined goals for the surge, and the surge’s goals have not been achieved. But there’s also John McCain’s almost frightening inability to understand the appropriate division of labor in the policymaking process:

As the surge should have taught us by now, troop numbers matter in Iraq. We should adjust those numbers based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders in Iraq — first and foremost, Gen. Petraeus, who above all others has proven that he knows how to steer this war to a successful outcome.

So what if Petraeus says he needs to maintain surge-level forces indefinitely and the Joint Chiefs say the only way to do that would be to cut back on deployments in Afghanistan but our commanders in Afghanistan say they can’t afford to cut back. Indeed, what if they say they need a surge of their own? Who do we listen to? Admiral Fallon? Who knows? The answer, clearly, is that while a responsible president needs to listen to what his military commanders in theater think but then he needs to use independent judgment. You’re never going to get an answer like “Sir, my strategy has failed” or “Sir, this other guy’s mission is more important than mine” out of an official in any kind of organization — military or civilian.

What’s President McCain going to do when it turns out that all of his subordinates throughout the government want more resources to be put at their disposal?

Steven Weisman reports: “Speaking in Israel at the beginning of his visit to the Middle East, Mr. Bush took a hard line on Iran over its nuclear program and said that ‘all options are on the table’ to guard against more military provocations like the Iranian threats to American ships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday.”

Good lord. Just think about the term “provocations.” Ponder it for a minute. Does it seem likely that musing about how all options are on the table is likely to deter a provocation? Does a provocation really seem like the kind of thing you can deter? Obviously, if push comes to shove, a US Navy vessel is going to have to defend itself but the way you dissuade an adversary from staging provocations is by indicating that you’re not going to give him what he wants. There’s an effort under way to goad the United States into doing something that will rally the Iranian people behind its leadership. Unfortunately, from time to time there seems to be a parallel effort inside the US government, rather than a counter-effort to maintain international consensus on Iranian nuclear activities while avoiding any big blowups.

I’m on a listserve where someone mentioned, as people tend to do, disquiet over the fact that Hillary Clinton “won’t admit she was wrong” to vote for the war. It reminds me, once again, that I think many more people need to seriously consider the possibility that this isn’t an instance of her stubbornly refusing to “admit” that she was wrong nearly so much as it is a case of her not believing she was wrong just as, for example, Michael O’Hanlon doesn’t think he was wrong to have supported the war. Lots of people who supported the war don’t think they were wrong to have supported the war, Hillary Clinton doesn’t say she thinks she was wrong to have supported the war, and I’ve never seen any serious reporting that indicates that she thinks she was wrong to have supported the war.

The biggest inquiry I’ve seen into the question of why Clinton won’t apologize for having supported the war was done by Michael Crowley wherein he concluded that she probably won’t “admit” that she was wrong because she thinks she did the right thing. It’s a subtle distinction, but I think it’s worth keeping in mind both for what it may hint about how she’ll govern and also for how it’s going to play out in a general election campaign.

A new epidemiological study of Iraq by the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization sees 151,000 or so dead through violence since the Iraq War began and “also found a 60 percent increase in nonviolent deaths — from such causes as childhood infections and kidney failure — during the period.” The news account contrasts this with the earlier statistical survey that found 655,000 “excess deaths” during the war period, of which 601,000 were from violence.

Unfortunately, I don’t understand from the coverage how different the total fatality rate in these two studies is. In other words, how much of the disagreement is about what to attribute an increase in the death rate to (violence or other) and how much is about disagreement over how many people died. This section implies, however, that the disagreement is primarily over causes:

Les Roberts, an epidemiologist now at Columbia University who helped direct the Johns Hopkins survey, also praised the new one. While both found a large increase in mortality, his found that much more of it was caused by violence.

“My gut feeling is that most of the difference between the two studies is a reluctance to report to the government a death due to violence,” he said. “If your son is fighting the government and died, that may not be something you’d want to admit to the government.”

Further difficulties include the fact that many people have been displaced by the conflict and also I assume that some entire households have been wiped out. It remains noteworthy to me that while the US military insists that it takes measures to minimize the civilian death toll, it doesn’t take any measures to quantify the civilian death toll, which makes it impossible to know what their measures accomplish. Step one in trying to increase blog traffic, for example, is to measure blog traffic.

Six killed in attack in Diyala province. What appears to have happened is that with surge forces concentrated in Baghdad and Anbar province, the insurgents eventually regrouped and relocated to Diyala and Ninawa provinces where we’re now seeing an uptick in violence. This might nonetheless be big progress except for the fact that we need to de-surge soon, so the odds seem very good that the insurgency will re-spread as we try to return to a sustainable posture. Meanwhile, Thomas Ricks and Karen DeYoung report that “U.S. military and diplomatic officials have begun their own quiet policy shift. After countless unsuccessful efforts to push Iraqis toward various political, economic and security goals, they have decided to let the Iraqis figure some things out themselves.”

This, I think, is what’s technically known as failing and giving up and then pretending that failing and giving up are part of a brilliant new strategy. On top of that, via Spencer Ackerman I see the Defense Department growing increasingly desperate in its spin: “Recent terrorist attacks on Iraqi concerned citizens groups indicate al Qaeda in Iraq’s increasing desperation.”

I got one of my early big breaks as a blogger back when Segio Vieira de Mello was killed in an early insurgent attack on a UN building. The rightwing spin was that this showed the insurgency was getting desperate. I said that was dumb. Josh Marshall linked to me. And that was in the summer of 2003. Over forty months later it’s unbelievable that we’re still hearing this inane line.