New DoD Iraq Report Still Undercounting Attacks

New DoD Iraq Report Undercounts Attacks

Iraq Study Group Urged End to Partial Tally of Iraq Violence

Posted 16 hr. 10 min. ago

By Eason Jordan

While saying the violence in Iraq is at an all-time high, the Pentagon's new quarterly Iraq report to Congress provides only a partial tally of attacks in that country -- a precedent set by the Pentagon's five previous quarterly Iraq reports to Congress.

The U.S. military's routine underreporting of attacks continues despite the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the U.S. military halt its practice of providing incomplete tallies.
The Iraq Study Group in its report called on U.S. military and intelligence chiefs to "institute immediate changes in the collection of data about violence and the sources of violence to provide a more accurate picture of events on the ground."

But the Pentagon's "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq" report released today showed the partial tally practice continues, presenting a skewed assessment of the violence.
On page three of the quarterly Iraq report released by the Pentagon, under a heading entitled "The Security Environment," this is written:

In the past three months, the total number of attacks increased 22%. Some of this increase is attributable to a seasonal spike in violence during Ramadan. Coalition forces remained the target of the majority of the attacks (68%), but the overwhelming majority of casualties were suffered by Iraqis.

Eighteen pages later in the Pentagon report, under a heading labeled "Attack Trends and Violence," the term "attacks" is qualified:

For this report, the term "attacks" refers to specific incidents reported in the Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) Significant Activities Database. It includes known attacks on Coalition forces, the ISF, the civilian population, and the infrastructure. Attacks typically consist of improvised explosive devides (IEDs), small arms fire, and indirect fire weapons.

The report states there were 959 attacks per week on average during the three-month reporting period.

Based on the Pentagon document, a reader could reasonably conclude that during the reporting period there were 959 attacks per week on average in Iraq and that 68% of those attacks in Iraq were targeted at coalition forces.

That would be a mistaken assumption, however, because, as the Iraq Study Group noted, some types of attacks are excluded from military tallies, the coalition has no record of many attacks in Iraq (principally sectarian violence), and a large percentage of attacks in Iraq are not noted in the Multi-National Forces-Iraq Significant Activities Database.

Here is what the Iraq Study Group report said about this U.S. military practice of providing an incomplete tally of violent attacks in Iraq:

There is significant (U.S. military) 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 (the U.S. military) 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 (by the U.S. military). 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 discrepency with policy goals.

Thus, the total number of attacks in Iraq remains much higher than is reflected in the U.S. military's qualified tally.

The Iraq Study Group sought to address this partial tally issue by proposing two fixes:
Recommendation 77: The Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense should devote significantly greater analytic resources to the task of understanding the threats and sources of violence in Iraq.

Recommendation 78: The Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense should also institute immediate changes in the collection of data about violence and the sources of violence in Iraq to provide a more accurate picture of events on the ground.
Here is a PDF of the Pentagon's full 53-page Iraq report.

9010Quarterly_Report_20061216.pdf (pdf)