Sometimes numbers tell a story better than any amount of words can. But that’s only if the public gets to see them.
This chart was just produced by Congress’ watchdog, the Government Accountability Office. It shows the number of attacks in Iraq, month by month, based on statistics kept by the military. It was contained in correspondence released today:
You can see a larger version of the chart here. It tells a pretty compelling story — part of a compelling story. It was produced in December, but it’s missing data for the months of September, October and November of this year — a period of increased violence, according to news reports. What gives?
I called Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO official who produced the document. “I have all [the Pentagon’s] data” for those months, he told me. But the military stamped it classified, he said. And despite making weeks of phone calls, he can’t convince anyone there to declassify the numbers.
“They give conflicting reasons,” Christoff told me. “For some reason, they haven’t gotten through their bureaucracy.”
News accounts from the period indicate that violence has increased since August, and the rate of U.S. casualties has accelerated. October was said to be particularly bloody.
