Monday, September 10, 2007

The Missing Petreaus Chart

By Cernig

Has anyone else noticed there was a chart missing from General Petreaus' exercise in the misuse of powerpoint? Where's the chart purporting to show levels of meddling by Iran, attacks utilizing Iranian arms or assistance and arrests of provably Iranian agents?

Kevin Drum points out that one of Saint Pet's helpful charts is simply wishful thinking on a graph and the folks at TPM are already raising serious questions about the raw data and methodology - unhelpfully not provided by Petreaus or the White House - which lies behind his other pictorial claims.

Yet a whole section of Petreaus' report about how those perfidious Iranians are creating violence in Iraq - is unsubstantiated by any graphs or data at all, even poor and misleading ones.

Could it be that there's so little real data or hard evidence to back these claims that graphing such would expose them instantly as spin and flim-flam?

No comments: