Troop Deaths Greater in Each Month of 2007

Stolen from Angry Bear

Over at Angry Bear Frank de Libero has posted a much better graph than mine. He also provided this further analysis:

But this is just part of a pattern of communicating, where true facts are presented within a limited context, so that the resulting asymmetry of information creates a false impression. Most of us don't know that Iraq temperatures reach 120 degrees in July so that physical activity like combat is down. On the other hand, if an official announced that lowland US snow fall in July was the lowest it's been all year -- duh. The difference is that here in the US we all know about July snow fall, so there's no asymmetry.

I would add that the Bush Administration also tried to roll out numbers based on "combat deaths" as opposed to "troop deaths" in order to exclude the deaths from two helicopter crashes. In this way, the claim could be made that "combat deaths" in August were lower than in July of 2007.

Check out Madeleine Albright in today's WaPo on How To Change Iraq:

A cynic might suggest that the military's real mission is to enable President Bush to continue denying that his invasion has evolved into disaster.