Just another month in the life and death of Iraq III

Remember those enthusiastic reports of an alleged drop -- a significant one -- in Baghdad's death toll for August? (I wrote about them here.) Well, they were wrong. And I was too quick to trust their veracity.

Essentially, the L.A. Times (and other news outlets) reported that the Baghdad morgue was "on track [in August] to receive less than a quarter" of the 1,800 bodies it received in July. The U.S. military attributed this decline to "a sweep involving 8,000 U.S. soldiers and 3,000 Iraqi troops aimed at stopping sectarian violence". Prime Minister Maliki claimed that "an atmosphere of reconciliation" was at hand.

I bought it. Specifically, I bought the claim that deaths were down in August. Indeed, I had "no doubt that the Baghdad sweep [was] doing some good". Nonetheless, I declared that "[the] "good" news [was] dangerously misleading". With the American-led operation in Baghdad, the violence there has only been "artificially lessened": "Once the American effort ends, or perhaps even before it does, the violence will likely return to its pre-sweep levels... The American sweep in Baghdad may be saving lives, but it isn't anything more than a stop-gap measure that makes things look better than they really are." And what about the violence elsewhere in Iraq?

I stand by all that, but now there's a twist. According to ABC News's Jim Sciutto, the death toll for August has been revised back up to July levels:

It turns out the official toll of violent deaths in August was just revised upwards to 1535 from 550, tripling the total. Now, we're depressingly used to hearing about deaths here, so much so that the numbers can be numbing. But this means that a much-publicized drop-off in violence in August -- heralded by both the Iraqi government and the US military as a sign that a new security effort in Baghdad was working -- apparently didn't exist.

That's right. There was no decline. It was all made up. Why? By whom?

Officials at the Baghdad morgue have no good explanation for the dramatically revised number. We'll see what the U.S. military has to say.

We will indeed, but don't expect the truth.

Both the U.S. military and Iraqi authorities, after all, had good reason to report a significant drop in Baghdad's death toll -- that is, to lie. For both, as well as for America's civilian leadership back in Washington, a drop would have indicated that real progress was being made in establishing order in Baghdad, in protecting Iraqi citizens from the insurgents and more generally in combatting and overcoming the insurgency itself, transferring security responsibility from U.S. forces to Iraqi forces, and in setting up a stable political climate from which the U.S. could comfortably withdraw and in which the fragile Iraqi government could govern effectively.

But, again, it was all a lie. The violence continues. The killing continues. The truth can be found at the Baghdad morgue. And throughout the rest of a country in chaos.

**********

Update: Our co-blogger Creature just posted on this very same topic at State of the Day. Go have a look at what he has to say about the "Lies & Propaganda".