Iraq Study Group observes ‘discrepancy minimisation’

From the Iraq Study Group Report:

In addition, there is significant under-reporting 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.

Just a thought, but that observed tendency to discrepancy minimisation may help illuminate why President Bush rejected as “not credible” the recent Johns Hopkins/Lancet study of mortality in Iraq.