I was wondering how potus and the-man-who-would-be potus were able to claim that security in Bagdead Baghdad was improving. As it turns out there's a trick to making a surge work, very similar to what you do to demonstrate a favorable economy, something this administration is already very skilled at.
And now, drum roll please, the recipe for the secret sauce, how to make the surge work, courtesy of the hopelessly beleaguered quisling Maliki dictatorship government.
"While government officials claimed an initial drop in the number of killings in the latter half of February following the launch of the Baghdad security plan, the number of reported casualties rose again in March," the study said.
But UNAMI (UN Assistance Mission for Iraq) also said that for the first time since it began issuing quarterly reports on the human rights situation in Iraq, the new January 1-March 31 one did not contain overall mortality figures from Iraq’s Ministry of Health because it refused to release them.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/...
And if that's not good enough for you nattering nabobs of negativity, there's always the figures from Iraqbodycount.org, which only counts what it sees in at least two independent news services--wait a minute, what?
The office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has lately refused to speak with news organizations that report on sectarian violence in ways that the government considers inflammatory; some outlets have been shut down.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Or, in other words:
You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between
(Johnny Mercer / Harold Arlen)
UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) isn't buying it (who cares what they think anyway):
The UN agency said that after the publication of its last human rights report about Iraq on January 16, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s office told UNAMI its mortality figures were exaggerated, "although they were in fact official figures compiled and provided by a government ministry.
Hey, that ain't working, that's the way you do it--in Bagdead.