September 26, 2004

Iraqi Hot Spots

An Email from Reader CrudeNXS:

John Kerry and his democratic friends of the left have attacked President Bush and the Prime Minister of Iraq's statements of this last week regarding the state of security over the majority of Iraq. In response to the Prime Minister's statement that 15 of the 18 provinces of Iraq are secure, Kerry has pronounced this statesment to be at least misleading and at worse an outright lie.

How do you check this for accuracy? How do you determine who is correct in this. I endeavored to find out. I researched the Central Command's website for press releases and casualty accounts. These are available and are archived and you can search back for months.

I performed a search for 90 days. I pulled out a map of Iraq from an old issue of National Geographic. I mounted the map and then started plotting the attacks as noted in the press releases. I did a spot check using various news services (CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, Fox News, Christian Science Monitor, Associated Press, Reuters New Service to name a few) in order to cross-check the press releases. I then plotted color coded stick pins on the map which I had mounted. Red stick pins represented attacks or battles with insurgents, blue were car bombs or suicide bombings, yellow were IED bomb attacks on convoys, and black were attacks on Oil related infrastructure.

Try it out. With a few minor exceptions, you will find the red stick pins are closely clustered around Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit, and Mosul. The yellow along highways in and out of those locations. Blue was almost entirely located in Baghdad with a few occurrences in Mosul. While black pins are located in strange, out of the way places that I can only surmise is along the oil pipeline.

It becomes even more interesting when you further code the pins in time. The last 90 days, the pins are tightly clustered along the four hotspots. Beyond 90 days, the pins are more scattered and outside 180 days, you can add other sites to the list - Najaf and Basra, for example.

To be honest, there are exceptions. But the trend is unmistakeable. And even reported "accidents" tend to follow the same pattern. What can you learn from this exercise? Could it be the President and Prime Minister are correct? What about all of the television reports? I then began to realize one major aspect of news reporting - you go where the action is heaviest. You do not report on the this year's hurricanes from Rhode Island. You go where the big winds are blowing - Florida. In Iraq, you go where the action is, again - Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit, and Mosul.

Where are the reports from the rest of the country? Does silence represent security? Does a lack of activity indicate some level of security? Does the absence of news reports indicate a lack of news? I don't know the complete answer, but I do know what this exercise tells me.


Posted by Commissar at September 26, 2004 12:23 PM
Confessions

Someone with more personal motivation than I have desperately needs to apply this method to creating a QuickTime or a Flash presentation or something that can be posted and linked and distributed for all to see.

If it became a real-time map of incidents, that'd be even better.

Extracted from: Jeff Harrell at September 26, 2004 01:05 PM

Great work!

The Radical Islamic Terrorists are on their last leg. The "Indidels" are winning.

In other news, if you plot terrorism in CA, you'll find (with some exceptions) most of the pins are clustered in LA, indicating the Amerikanskis are close to getting that state under control.

Extracted from: ACE at September 26, 2004 02:44 PM

Good observation about California, Ace. But when it comes to Santa Monica, Berkeley and San Francisco, I think we'll have to destroy them to save them.

Extracted from: MrGrumpyDrawers at September 26, 2004 05:08 PM

Comrade, can you get this man to send in a digital photograph?

That would be gud.

Extracted from: Greg at September 26, 2004 06:10 PM

Remember, the media is only to report bad news, unless of course Oceania is winning....

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Extracted from: KBiel at September 27, 2004 12:08 PM

I did a map of the fighting which covered the time period for six weeks after the handover. I'm planning to do another one that covers fighting in September that will be more detailed.

But one thing to keep in mind is that there will naturally be more fighting in the region in and around Baghdad since that region contains roughly 40% of the population of Iraq. Baghdad alone accounts for 20% of Iraq's population.

Extracted from: Robert McClelland at September 28, 2004 02:10 PM

Uh, if you think CNN or Fox or whomever is reporting every attack, you're wearing blinders. From reading the foreign press I've seen the violence is significantly more widespread than our media is letting on.

And now the NYTimes has gotten a hold of a report by a security company that lends credence to what Kerry is saying. Yeah, yeah, it's the "liberal" Times. Just sayin'.

Extracted from: NTodd at September 29, 2004 09:01 AM

The data included in the NY Times article referenced by commenter NTodd, "Iraq Study Sees Rebels' Attack as Widespread" actually supports the position that all but 3-5 provinces in Iraq are relatively peaceful. The article quotes statistics for "attacks" over a 30 day period in several provinces: 3 provinces averaged 9-11 attacks per day during the period, a fourth province averaged about 4 per day, and a fifth averaged about 2.5 per day. The article also said that a sixth province had a total of 13 attacks during the 30 day period. Apparently the remaining 12 provinces experienced less than 13 attacks during the period, although every province had at least one attack. Therefore the data in the article doesn't support the article's conclusion that the attacks are "widespread" instead of being concentrated in 3-5 provinces. Does the NY Times spin surprise anyone??

Extracted from: Rod at September 29, 2004 11:16 AM

The New York Times beat me to the punch. I was in the process of translating my "stickpin map" information to a Geographic Information System (GIS)when this map was published. My original intent was not to be supportive of the Iraqi Prime Minister but to find out on my own if I could what the real truth is. I wish Mr. Kerry had done a little homework of his own before he attacked the President and Prime Minister. My question is not whether the NYT's spin is surprising but what Mr. Kerry's comment would be if presented with this more complete map?

Extracted from: CrudeNXS at September 30, 2004 08:23 AM