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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (314313)	12/7/2006 3:55:57 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576163

I've always suspected this... Iraqi panel finds US underreported violence in Iraq The Pentagon defended the US military's reporting of conditions in Iraq, after a major study by a bipartisan group concluded that US authorities have been systematically underreporting the violence there. The Iraq Study Group said a careful review of reporting on one day in July 2006 brought to light 1,100 acts of violence rather than the 93 attacks or significant attacks reported by US authorities on that day. In a report released Wednesday, the group said "there is significant underreporting of violence in Iraq." "The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases," it said. "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 a mortar attack that doesn't hurt US personnel doesn't count," the report said. The group, which was led by former secretary of state James Baker and former representative Lee Hamilton, did not single out the military's reporting, nor did it accuse the government of deliberately underreporting the violence. But it said: "Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals." The report also faulted the Pentagon for not investing enough in people and resources to better understand the threats facing US forces in Iraq. The group said it was told the Defense Intelligence Agency had only 10 analysts with more than two years' experience in analyzing the insurgency. "They are not doing enough to map the insurgency, dissect it and understand it on a national and provincial level," the report said. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not address the specifics of the group's findings. "The military can only report what they know, what they see, what they observe -- information that they obtain," he told reporters. "But I can tell you there has been every effort within the bounds of operational security in providing the most accurate picture to the leadership of this country and the American people in terms of the challenges they face there, in terms of casualties," he said. The Iraq Study Group's assessment that the situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating" contrasted with a stream of upbeat military reports of progress, which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld often complained were being ignored by the media.