The Mayor’s Accident Statistics

September 6, 2007

The metropol police department’s claim that accidents have decreased sharply in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts, who contend that some of the underlying
statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.

Reductions in accidents form the centerpiece of Mayor Liar’s claim that his accident reduction strategy is working.

Statistic analysts computing aggregate levels of accidents puzzled over how the police designated accidents as irrelevant, severe or collateral, according to one senior official. "If a car is hit in the rear,
it’s severe," the official said. "If it is front on, it’s
irrelevant."

Among the most worrisome trends cited were an escalating number of downtown accidents involving pedestrians. According to a spokesman for the police department, those events are not included in
the police’s statistics. "Given a lack of capability to accurately
track such incidents, except in certain
instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any
significant degree."

Accidents involving city owned vehicles are also excluded from the police’s calculation.

The police stopped releasing statistics on deaths by accident in late
2005, saying the news media were taking them out of context.

Mayor Liar’s reelection campaign is expected to claim a 75% reduction in accidents as his main achievement. The campaign is enjoying bipartisan support.

An analysts, however, said the
overall assessment was that the accident situation "was still getting worse," he said, "but not as fast."

link

Posted by b on September 6, 2007 at 12:48 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Masterful b, I’m blown away by your continued progression as a writer.
Business as usual for ” BUSINESS AS USUAL”.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 6 2007 13:05 utc | 1

😉

Posted by: Argh | Sep 6 2007 14:43 utc | 2

outside of the loyal press, it’s discouraging that anything mayor liar or his faithful lackeys say is still not automatically assumed to be a lie until actually proven otherwise.

Posted by: b real | Sep 6 2007 15:15 utc | 3

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
(from Through the Looking Glass)
And now that Surgin’ September is here:
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax –
Of cabbages – and kings –
And why the sea is boiling hot –
And whether pigs have wings.”
(from ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’)

Posted by: Antifa | Sep 6 2007 15:16 utc | 4

This article is from a few months ago. My apologies if it had been previously linked to.
Is the United States Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month? Or Is It More?

(snip)
Let’s keep in mind, then, that the United States undertakes something over 1,000 patrols each day, and lately this number has surged to over 5,000 (if we also count patrols by the Iraqi military). According to U.S. military statistics, again reported by the Brookings Institute, these patrols patrols currently result in just under 3,000 firefights every month, or just under an average of 100 per day (not counting the additional 25 or so involving our Iraqi allies). Most of them do not produce 24 Iraqi deaths, but the rules of engagement our soldiers are given — throwing hand grenades into buildings holding suspected insurgents, using maximum firepower against snipers, and calling in artillery and air power against stubborn resistance — guarantee a regular drumbeat of mortality.
It is worth recording how these events are reported in the American press, when they are noted at all. Here, for example, is an Associated Press account of American/British patrols in Meyssan province, a stronghold of the Mahdi army:
Well to the south, Iraqi officials reported as many as 36 people were killed in fierce overnight fighting that began as British and Iraqi forces conducted house-to-house searches in Amarah, a stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia [6].
This brief description was part of a five paragraph account of fighting all over Iraq, part of a review under the headline “U.S. and Iraqi forces Move on Insurgents.” It contained brief accounts of several different operations, none of them presented as major events. There were 100 or so engagements that day, and many of them produced deaths. How many? Based on the Lancet article, we could guess that on that day — and most days — the incident in Amarah represented perhaps one-tenth of all the Iraqis killed by Americans that day. Over the course of June, the accumulated total probably came to something over 10,000.
(snip)

Speculation. But speculation is what observers have to engage in when official statistics paint a lie.

Posted by: Alamet | Sep 6 2007 17:10 utc | 5

Some more ‘pedestrians’ that will not be counted:
US strikes in Baghdad kill 14 sleeping civilians

US combat helicopters and tanks bombarded a Baghdad neighbourhood in pre-dawn strikes on Thursday, killing 14 sleeping civilians and destroying houses, angry residents and Iraqi officials said.
…
Iraqi defence and interior ministry officials said US helicopters fired on houses in the Al-Washash neighbourhood of Mansour district in west Baghdad between 2:00 am and 3:00 am.
…

Posted by: b | Sep 6 2007 18:27 utc | 6

Nice one, b. Brought back Billmon.

Posted by: Browning | Sep 6 2007 19:02 utc | 7

In all likelihood the Petreaus’ mission is to create the illusion of progress in order to buy more time. Funding and arming the former insurgency is a sure fire way to reduce the attack metric on U.S. troops by making a deal – a deal that could have been made at any time during the U.S. occupation of 4+ years – a deal that could have been made without the need to bomb Fallujah to dust – a deal that could have avoided probably 90% of U.S. tactical operations in Anbar province, not to mention the 100’s of thousands of Iraqi casualties that resulted.
Buying more time is the only thing that makes any sense, when arming your former enemies is the (last&) only tactic that can yield any concrete evidence of progress. This is especially true considering that the deal in Anbar has NOTHING to do with the surge tactic in Baghdad – where violence has predictably escalated upward along with the number of troops put into action, so the virtual ceasefire in Anbar can be conflated with the surge to create the appearance of something resembling a tactical epiphany, a whole new way, that might guarantee success, if only given more time to work its magic.
Whats being justified is more time. And in another sense, more troops. Because the surge is more troops, its necessary to make it appear to be working, if even by other unrelated means. If violence has escalated in tandem with the surge, and can be counterbalanced and made to look successful by the deal in Anbar, then a (much celebrated, but) token reduction in troop levels in the near future, should thereby produce its own corresponding reduction in violence – again, producing the illusion of more progress. And the demand for more time.
Up and until (of course) the Sunni insurgency has refreshed and redeveloped itself into a formidable foil against the Da’wa led government in Baghdad – now being branded in Washington as “bottom up reconciliation” – or in other words creating by force a renewed military threat the Iraqi government to do or die. In which case a salvation coup becomes inevitable and rational to roll up and undo the evil Iranian proxy Da’wa government not to be trusted. You remember, the same Da’wa party that had its fingerprints all over the 1983 marine barracks bombing in Lebanon.
All of which then create yet another major paradigm shift, with a whole new set of possibilities, hopes, and dreams.
And an insatiable lust for yet more time and more troops.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 6 2007 19:52 utc | 8

anna missed
their world is falling apart but as noirette/tangerine noted – they are going to take down as many people as they can. the rudimentary construct of their brutality is appalling but that construct allowed them to murder 3 million vietnamese, allowed apartheid south africa to slaughter tens of thousands when it was clear it had lost, this construct allowed the people of central & latin america to suffer decades of misrule & murder because the empire’s premier beneficiaries & principal perpetrators are – concretement unopposed on their own territory
b’s rhetorical demand for the deaths of the u s army is in fact the only thing the american people will listen to & perhaps stop these criminals
it is clear that the mass of american oppose this war but they are not doing so concretely, or concretely enough
they should shame their leadership with exemplariness

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 6 2007 22:34 utc | 9

The view that AQI is neither as big nor as lethal as commonly believed is widespread among working-level analysts and troops on the ground. A majority of those interviewed for this article believe that the military’s AQI estimates are overblown to varying degrees. If such misgivings are common, why haven’t doubts pricked the public debate? The reason is that alternate views are running up against an echo chamber of powerful players all with an interest in hyping AQI’s role.
…
Five years ago, the American public was asked to support the invasion of Iraq based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to al-Qaeda. Today, the erroneous belief that al-Qaeda’s franchise in Iraq is a driving force behind the chaos in that country may be setting us up for a similar mistake.

Posted by: b | Sep 7 2007 5:50 utc | 10

Speaking of accidental statistics today Matt notices the disconnect, pointed out yesterday by Chris, between the electorate and their leaders:
Our Ignorant Electorate
Democrats Grossly Misinformed On Candidate Plans For Iraq
To me this is obvious as Hillary herself, in a pre invasion youtube video, addressing Code Pink on her war vote, informed them that she had read all the intelligence estimates before making her decision. Fast forward years later and a Presidential campaign and she now states she did not read the NIE on Iraq which contradicted Bush’s Iraq claims. Not much different than Romney claiming in the first presidential debate that if Saddam had let the inspectors in there would not have been an invasion. Blitzer didn’t bother challenging him on that claim. Politicians can basically say anything regardless of the facts and the public doesn’t seem to notice.
This disconnect from reality is starkly illustrated by a post on Dailykos by Stan Goff:
Last night,, after hearing on one of those putative “new” program on television that all three Democratic Presidential front-runners had crawfished away from their tepid aversion to the war in Iraq, all three now talking about an indefinite “presence” there, I dashed off a threat at Daily Kos not to vote for them, or any other Dem who refused to call for an Out Now position.
Foray into KOS
If you follow the links and read the comments posted in his thread at KOS you will notice he was called a troll and attacked for daring to change their delusions. In my mind it is obvious especially with all the good press and backing Hillary has gotten from the neocons in the AEI, Murdoch, and the media. They were all tripping all over themselves defending Hillary from the “rookie” Obama.

Posted by: Sam | Sep 7 2007 7:53 utc | 11

Here is the video:
after carefully reviewing reviewing the information and the intelligence I had available
Another video claiming she didn’t read the NIE on Iraq:
Hillary Clinton did not read the NIE
An article on Slate where she was directly asked the question:
Hillary was asked last night whether she read the NIE before her Iraq vote and she ducked a little. She said she was briefed. We know she didn’t read it.
Reading the NIE
You would think before invading another country those in power would at least want to informed before making such a decision.

Posted by: Sam | Sep 7 2007 7:55 utc | 12

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