Two bad weeks at the start of April, and the NYT cranks out a story speculating that this is the new trend. The paper did not wait for the end of the month, as JSinger suggests should be done.

After a bad April, US military deaths declined every month, including July. The only mention of this in the NYT was a single sentence in a story last week about how the insurgency was getting stronger because it has launched more IED attacks from Jan-July. That story claimed that US wounded shot up during that time period. The numbers actually represented ends of a range that has existed for two years, and were lower than in late 2005. Moreover, though that story emphasized that most IED attacks are against US troops, the number of US dead overall, the number of US dead from IEDs, and the number of US wounded in Iraq all declined in the past 7 months relative to the last 7 months of 2005.

The NYT uses a two week timeframe when it suits them, a seven month timeframe when it suits them, and makes no meaningful comparisons that would put their stats in context.

BTW, JSinger is absolutely correct that a reduction in casualties is not necessarily a sign of success in a war. Certainly, when the Allies invaded at Normandy, the casualty rate shot up, but this was a sign of success. However, as the NYT seems to believe that the numbers of US dead and wounded are the only statistic by which to judge Iraq, a 20 percent drop in a short period of time would seem to qualify as progress… at least from the perspective of those who favor the US and Iraq.

Probably not. (Putting aside the question of how much cutting cvilian deaths from 34 a day to 27 qualifies as “success”.) But perhaps we can table that discussion until we see where things actually stand in September or October?

(BTW, how did you get the italics? Normal HTML didn’t work for me. I hate software that doesn’t let you preview…)

“Yes, their problem in this case is not MSM bias [], but MSM slowness.”

In that case, then, should we expect in September to see similar NYT pieces on the success of anti-violence efforts in Baghdad? Call me jaded, but personal experience tells me to expect only crickets, especiall so near an election in which the “failures in Iraq” have been so promenantly positioned by the Democrats hoping to control take Congress.

And lots of NYT readers still think so.

Uhh, because August isn’t over and they’re reporting the most recent month for which full statistics are available? If you’re correct and there are real gains being made against terrorism, rather than just a lull between waves of attacks, that’s fantastic. But it hardly seems unethical of them not to choose the precise window of time you want them to use.