Are the piles of dead bodies getting bigger or not?

A must read article on the Iraq statistics.

The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.

But I find the most telling bit is this. They're not just disputing statistics from antiwar activists, they're claiming that even their own intelligence agencies are flawed.

Senior U.S. officers in Baghdad disputed the accuracy and conclusions of the largely negative GAO report, which they said had adopted a flawed counting methodology used by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of those conclusions were also reflected in last month's pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

In the end, the debate is all definitional, but by my count, you've got the CIA, DIA, and GAO (not to mention the AP and McClatchy) all saying violence is about the same, while it's just Petraeus, Odierno, and the White House citing improvements.

(In this debate, I think it's very important to watch the shift in reference between "the military" and "senior officers in Baghdad.")

And while we're looking at the "shaping" of statistics, it's probably worth a moment to take a look at this,

Indeed, interviews with numerous military and intelligence analysts, both inside and outside of government, suggest that the number of strikes the group has directed represent only a fraction of what official estimates claim. Further, al-Qaeda's presumed role in leading the violence through uniquely devastating attacks that catalyze further unrest may also be overstated.

Not really a surprise, is it?.