Censure the Post, Bob and Arlen!
Oh dear. It seems that MoveOn’s ad did more damage than anyone thought. Now the Washington Post is contradicting General Petraeus: just like MoveOn, they’re suggesting he may have cooked the books:
Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian casualty numbers in the Pentagon’s latest quarterly report on Iraq last week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional testimony. Petraeus’s chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon combined the numbers of dead and wounded — a figure that should be greater. Yet Petraeus’s numbers were higher than the Pentagon’s for the months preceding this year’s increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations escalated this summer.
The charts are difficult to compare: Petraeus used monthly figures on a line graph, while the Pentagon computed “Average Daily Casualties” on a bar chart, and neither included actual numbers. But the numerical differences are still stark, and the reasons offered can be hard to parse. The Pentagon, in a written clarification, said that “Gen. Petraeus reported civilian deaths based on incidents reported by Coalition forces plus Iraqi government data. The [Pentagon] report only includes incidents reported by Coalition forces for civilian causality data.”
Someone get Bob Casey and Arlen Specter on the phone. As Pennsylvania Senators, they voted to condemn MoveOn’s “attacks on the honor, integrity, and patriotism of any individual who is serving or has served honorably in the United States Armed Forces, by any person or organization.“
“Any person or organization”. I must assume this includes the Post. Clearly something must be done to stop this outrageous exercise of free speech and a free press!
