Many reader reactions to my earlier pieces this week on military death rates, and the political propaganda purposes to which such data are put, raised several objections and counter-arguments.

I appreciated the discussions and feedback, both positive and negative, and even those who found fault, did so respectfully and with information to back up their arguments. A rare circumstance, unfortunately, in my experience, and I wanted to draw attention to and return the compliment of civil disagreement and debate.

Blame this son of an Insurance Actuary – do other Insurance Industry progeny have this same obsession with statistics? – but I think it vitally important to address the statistical problems and issues that were raised in these discussions, as well as political or agenda-based concerns. Statistical means and methods first.

Several people made the same mistake I did at first, which was to mistake and misunderstand the data presented. Others, including myself and the author of the NY Sun piece, mixed two different cuts of data between the two examples, any selection of pre-Iraqi war military death rate data and what was in fact exclusively raw data on total military deaths in Iraq. What slices of data you use will always influence the result you can portray. One critic answered the NY Sun Op Ed’s admittedly arbitrary but politically convenient basis for comparison of early Clinton Years to Iraq war years, with an equally arbitrary and equally convenient Later Clinton Years to Iraq war years.

The table that was presented was of military death rates from 1980-2004, not total deaths. Why is this important? Because unless you use death rates, you’re comparing raw number of deaths between years in which there were differences in the number of military. The tables showed the raw number of deaths in various categories per 100,000 individuals. That way, the rates in the various categories can be compared across periods in which the numbers in service fluctuated.

To pluck any segments of raw data out and use for comparison, without considering the basis and assumptions for those numbers, and finding a way to reconcile and/or extrapolate, means you’re comparing apples and oranges. Working through the available data, and selecting just those portions for comparison that exaggerate the predetermined effect you are seeking, intentionally introduces selection bias. If you pick only the data that supports your intent, and ignore data that refutes it, you get what you pay for. Call it the MSM Approach to Reporting on Iraq. (Because it is.)

Several commenters pointed out that death rates attributed to accident were steadily decreasing throughout the period in question, and that higher combat death rates are therefore masked in the composite, and this is no doubt true. I’ve served in the military, as a senior non-commissioned officer (NCO), and virtually my entire career involved in training. Two factors (no doubt, among others) contribute to this long-term trend of decreasing accidents.

Commanders and other Officers pay close attention to preventable accidents, and work procedures and training methods are under constant scrutiny and adaptation to prevent training and other accidents, on duty and off. That’s one factor, one closely associated with an overall workplace safety ethic, likewise reflected in OSHA and other type safety initiatives. The military, no less than other occupations, has been burdened by an increasing intolerance to any residual risk.

With the same effect but a different motivation, the military has also been constrained by the second factor I’ve seen at work: an almost total reluctance to ever risk military lives unless the risks have been severely mitigated, the benefits are enormous, and the potential cost in lives is infinitesimal. Call it the Powell Doctrine run amok, but it’s been at work in the American Military even before Gulf War One. (In fact, the first Gulf War, Panama, Grenada, Bosnia, and similar military campaigns only reinforced the great American reluctance in all things military.)

Which gets me to the other objections to even having these discussions, that of playing on the turf of the war’s opponents, or somehow giving them a gotcha moment. Look, they pull the data and ignore the facts in giant orders of magnitude more than those who support the war and sometimes get the facts wrong. Our failings won’t give them any more ammunition they wouldn’t find on their own, manufacture, dream up, or distort through their kaleidoscopes of hate.

Any of us in the military know that what we’re really talking about is National Security and the preservation of our way of life. That we fight against multiple enemies, those within and without, who hate America, or reject our ideals, or despise what we represent, or resent our material success, or loath our cultures, or through misguided altruism or idealism, seek to control what God and our founding fathers meant to be free and at Liberty.

Every loss of life in the military piece of that fight represents great sacrifice of treasure, of course felt most deeply by the friends, family, and comrades in arms of those who fall.

But we can’t abandon any battleground in this war against our war. I consider arguing details against those who manipulate and misrepresent, who want to exploit the sacrifices of our military, is a part of a necessary struggle. I don’t think doing so demeans or belittles the military sacrifices. It’s not the only fight. It may not even be a very important one. But it’s a fight MILBLOGS are well suited to wage.

More to come.

The war against the war in Iraq is a quagmire, and the US Congress is wallowing in the mud, looking for escape.

So Jules Crittenden describes the worsening political dilemma in which the war’s Congressional opponents find themselves, writing at Pajamas Media. (You have to check out Jules piece, if only to see the World War Two era poster graphic above the caption, “We were — neck deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool said to push on.”)

Signs abound that the domestic political situation is better (or worse, depending on your politics) than might have been presumed, at least on the part of the mainstream media (MSM), ascendant Democrats, and weak-kneed Republicans.

Polls consistently affirm that Americans don’t want to lose or surrender in Iraq, nor allow Congress to take any action that effectively ensures that the war will be lost, so they can “win.” I often wonder if a large segment of polling responses leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, showing large dissatisfaction with the war, actually reflected sentiment that we weren’t fighting hard or seriously enough. Disgruntled Libertarians, fiscal or social conservatives, even traditional GOP might well have registered all manner of disgust with the former members of Congress, or even the President, and used the subject of the war in Iraq as the focus of their disappointment. But the steps taken, overtly and covertly by Speaker Pelosi, Congressman and Head Goon Murtha, and uber-liberal Senators Levin, Schumer and Kennedy, must surely inflame these same cross-over poll-takers and voters, if current polls are any accurate indication.

Immediate positive results from the Iraqi surge campaign – Moqtada fleeing Baghdad for his puppet masters in Iran, decreased sectarian violence, several major battle wins, and major terrorist apprehensions – can’t have helped the Democrats in their covert actions against the war.

Jules’ take is right on target, however much his tongue rests in his cheek:

The situation is increasingly desperate.  Americans, who had seen in the Democratic Congress a chance to extricate themselves from an unpopular conflict, appear to be coming to the conclusion that Bush’s war is a more attractive choice than the Democratic peace.  Here are some of the ugly facts on the ground:

Ø      Public Opinion Strategies found that 67 percent of voters think the country is going in the wrong direction and 60 percent think Iraq has no future as a stable democracy.  But 57% believe “The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism” and that we have to keep our troops there and finish the job. 

Ø      Hillary Clinton, trying out out-Obama Obama, is playing to the hard left in classic pre-primary strategy.  That would be the 17% who favor immediate withdrawal.

Ø      A majority, 56 percent of likely voters, say “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.”  And 53 percent say, “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.”

Ø      Other recent polls have found support for Bush’s troop surge surging, and while opposition to the war is high, so is opposition to (a) surrender, (b) losing, (c) defeat and (d) compelling the  troops to do any of the same.

Hoisted by their own petard, goes the old saying, or be careful what you wish for. I have heard it identified as an old Chinese curse, “may you receive what you wish for.”

So that leaves much of Congress in a jar of their own pickling. (In the curds from their own cheese-making? In the butter of their own churning? In the mash from their own beer-making? I like the images, but none of them come out right in words.)

Here’s how Jules’ concluded:

Congress is unwilling to shed blood in defense of its own beliefs.  The great, principled Democratic Congress lacks the strength of its own convictions, and all the rhetoric in the world can’t save it now.  It is in a quagmire of its own.

However it’s described, the mess is what it is, and it’s surely more of a mess for those with no principles to guide them, no higher purpose to motivate them, and no recourse left to sympathy. They had none for the Administration, nor the military who serves all of our interests, until it suited theirs. Like the faithless servant in the New Testament parable, who, forgiven a great debt by his master, turns to extract a debt owed by another, with harshness and without mercy. That servant is then retaken for his debt, and thrown into utter darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

(That’s hardly news, is it?)

The Associated Press continues to misreport recent events in the Senate.

In their report contrasting Democrat political maneuvering in the House, with their less successful partisan efforts in the Senate, the AP claims:

Under House rules, Democratic leaders have the authority to advance a measure to the floor for three days of debate and a vote.

That stands in contrast to the Senate, where Republicans have so far blocked an attempt by Democrats to hold a full-fledged debate on a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops.

Weasels and their media zookeepers.

What the “Republicans blocked,” was a Senate Democrat attempt to move a single the Senate Resolution to cloture, as in, to end debate. What Sebate Repulicans and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut objected to, was ham-fisted Democrat attempts to stifle any meaningful debate or offering of alternative legislation or amendments, to get their prize: a meaningless, posturing, repudiation of the Commander in Chief in a time of war.

As courageous Joe Lieberman pointed out yesterday, this was both unprecedented and an encouragement to our enemies. (You know, the real ones President Bush is supposedly distracted from dispatching, not the partisan ones.)

Call this an update from yesterday’s post on Iran.

Michael Ledeen laments the complete lack of leadership in Washington or elsewhere on our sworn and committed enemies in Iran, over at National Review Online. Close readers of Ledeen will note he no longer calls for acceleration (“Faster, please”), as by his account, we’ve reached a final point of decision.

In contrast to the foolish Editors at the Times, and the spineless majorities in Congress, Ledeen holds this Administration and its heavy laden and latent Foreign Policymakers accountable: for too little action, too little show of strength, too little resolve, and no amount of clue at all, in dealing with Iran. Here’s how Ledeen opens his blast:

Never has a country strained so hard to avoid a conflict as the United States concerning Iran. They have waged war against us for 28 years, and we are only now beginning to contemplate the possibility of a response.

So perhaps it’s finally come to a reckoning, long overdue.

I had a chat today with my former OIF Company Commander. We spoke of the bug-swarm of Presidential wannabes, and then turned to the subject of Iran. How desperately important is has long been, to send Iran a message that can’t possibly be misunderstood. The last straw, for him, was Iranian arms and expertise, used against us in war in Iraq.

“You don’t hear a lot about all the helicopters being shot down, all of a sudden. [Military officials] aren’t saying anything about why.”

“Shoulder fired missiles from Iran?”

“Of course, where else would they be coming from?”

The CO mentioned that his wife asked him about those downed helicopters, mentioned in recent news reports. He said he got to thinking, and we both did, how for the first 2 years of OIF, air travel just wasn’t any concern for us. He flew rotary and fixed wing, in and around Iraq, to Kuwait, and never had any serious concern about being shot down. We felt this complacency in-air, quite in contrast to driving in convoys on the ground, where alertness and adrenaline defined the experience. Has that changed? Probably not, I worried about it immediately post 9/11 for civilian air traffic. We should have always expected the possibility in the combat zone, but like anything, you lose the expectation when it never happens.

There is nothing secret about Iranian offensive operations against us, directly or by proxy. I reveal nothing from classified Intel briefings in declaring that Iran and Syria have had a direct and heavy hand in everything the fledging Iraqi Government and the Coalition forces have faced in the nearly 4 years since we toppled Saddam Hussein. However much we have deceived ourselves, the attention of our enemies has never wavered, has never weakened.

Ledeen notes a flurry of press reports about this or that evidence of Iranian perfidy, as if we needed any more “smoking guns,” and declares it self-deception:

This is the pattern that led us straight to 9/11. For that matter, it got us to Pearl Harbor and to Khobar Towers, and to the Beirut bombings of our embassy and the Marine barracks. It is a pattern of denial and self-deception, driven by an absolute conviction that the truth must not be passed on to people whose view of the world differs from your own. And so our kids get blown up in Iraq, while the Bushes, Rices, Rumsfelds, Cambones, Tenets, Negropontes, and their cohorts deny that we know who’s doing it. Deputy Secretary of State Burns, the architect of our failed Middle East mission, goes to Israel to thump his chest and talk about getting tough with Iran, meaning tough talk and a few symbolic gestures, certainly not regime change. Such people talk about “insurgency” as if the shattered remnants of Saddam’s ruined state were capable of mounting the terror war we face, when common sense points in the direction of professional intelligence services in Tehran and Damascus.
We are not alone in this suicidal self-deception. Our friends across the water, those tough-minded Englishmen who have recently decided to abolish the Royal Navy for all intents and purposes, have been frenetically seducing us into one diplomat failure after another with regard to Iran for many years now. It is no surprise, then, that the London Times yesterday quoted British officials are denying there is a “smoking gun” to show Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq. I think the unnamed officials who are saying that are either out of the intelligence loop or lying. American intelligence has known for at least a year and a half that the frightful shaped charges that have killed and maimed so many American soldiers were manufactured in Iran — they traced the serial numbers back to the Iranian manufacturer — and it is inconceivable that we would have failed to share that fact with our British allies.
I can well imagine the debates now raging inside the Bush administration over what is apparently a substantial trove of devastating information about Iranian activities in Iraq, and perhaps also Afghanistan. American officials long opposed to any serious challenge to Iran pronounced the information “a bombshell,” and some of them now say they have changed their minds about going after the mullahs. So those who still want to take the diplomatic route, and continue to appease Tehran, must set up a series of obstacles: first try to keep the intelligence bottled up; if that fails, discredit it; and if all else fails join the “war is not the answer” crowd, whose credibility rests on the hope that nobody in America has read any history.

We come to the end of a very long road indeed, and the meter has greatly accumulated since we started our meandering journey. No matter what means or manner of payment, none of us will be happy about the fare. That won’t save us from paying every penny due.

This was never about happiness, or ideal solutions, or the smug complacency of all those strutting about today with eagle-eye hindsight and Chicken Little courage. Yesterday, I heard some clueless commentator lament that, although we’re all sure Iran is behind a lot of the sectarian violence and terrorism in Iraq, “it’s extremely difficult to prove it.”

The affairs of state, of National Security, aren’t the purview of some twisted OJ Simpson celebrity trial, where “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit!” That kind of misguided devotion to certainty surely led Neville Chamberlain to believe Hitler would stop with Czechoslovakia, or convinced a spiteful and callous Congress that the citizens of South East Asia would be better off working out their own problems, under Communism if need be, but without further US support.

This kind of logic will destroy us, come the day of the first terrorist nuclear detonation, if we allow it to survive, whereby the handwringers and the morally crippled will say, “We don’t know Iran [or North Korea or Venezuela, or any of a dozen other nation states who plot and plan our destruction] had anything to do with it!”

Ledeen has gotten far more right than wrong, these years since 9/11, and more right than proponents and surely critics of the Bush Administration’s policies. He’s right now, though I doubt it causes him much comfort. Vindication will come, but much will be lost and the cost will be severe, the longer it takes us to wake from present slumber.

The New York Times says that President Bush is “bullying” Iran, which somehow makes the Iranians more belligerent, but not afraid. If Congress won’t stop him, he’ll get us into war with Iran. But with verbiage, I suppose, since Tehran knows he doesn’t mean it and America won’t back him up. That’s so nuanced a position one can hardly pick out a single action the President could take the NYT Editors would support. (Oh, right…)

They claim that what they’re waiting for is diplomacy with Iran. And if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as crazy and defiant as the President and his few remaining supporters allege, why then we’ll juts appeal to those “clearer heads” in Iran. Someone should explain to the Editors that what passes for clearer heads in Iran are clearer precisely because their skulls no longer bear flesh.

Think through the logic of this wholly dishonest Times Editorial:

Given America’s bitter experience in Iraq, one would think that President Bush could finally figure out that threats and brute force aren’t a substitute for a reasoned strategy. But Mr. Bush is at it again, this time trying to bully Iran into stopping its meddling inside Iraq.

We have no doubt about Iran’s malign intent, just as we have no doubt that Mr. Bush’s serial failures in Iraq have made it far easier for Tehran to sow chaos there and spread its influence in the wider region. But more threats and posturing are unlikely to get Iran to back down. If Mr. Bush isn’t careful, he could end up talking himself into another disastrous war, and if Congress is not clear in opposing him this time, he could drag the country along.

On the one hand, the editors concede “Iran’s malign intent,” and since the don’t dispute the particular actions by which “Iran’s malign intent” is confirmed to the Paper of Record, let’s presume they know what the rest of us know: that Iran is at war with us, and actively sponsoring, supporting, directing, and conducting acts of war against us in Iraq and elsewhere. What in any generation of leadership prior to say, Jimmy Carter anyway, would have spit out their morning coffee over, and declared war. But for the modern ear, passes for subtleties of Inter-global diplomacy.

Which I suppose is the point. If, as the Times Editors, you believe that every ill in the Middle East was caused by or made infinitely worse by one gunslinger President from Texas, why then of course any step he takes to advance (or even defend) US interests give those poor, put upon Mullahs have no choice but threaten the annihilation of Israel or the subjection of Europe under Sharia law.

Same old same old from the Times. God forbid we act at all aggressively in the face of attack or acts of war. Heaven help us, no tough talk or implied threats or even demonstrations of resolve. Nope, just give total control back to the Democrats in Washington and the kleptocrats at the UN, with appropriate obsequiousness to faded European were-powers, and all will be well.

And of course, if it all turns to hell after George is gone, we can still blame him for everything.

Also commenting:

Jules Crittenden, Mr. Bush, Stop Bullying Iran!

Marc Schulman, The New York Times on Iran

Dean Barnett, The Grey Lady Speaks

Billy Hollis, BUSH'S "BULLYING"

Greg Tinti, We're Bullying Iran?!?!?!?  —  The New York Times' editorial board …