The Associated Press' Douglas Birch writes in today's papers--a bit after it was reported in many other places--that US deaths in Iraq were way down in October, and so were civilian deaths. But Birch apparently just can't figure out why that is so.
Is it because there are so few people left to kill, now that Sunni areas have been depopulated by Shia militia, and vice versa? Is it because so many people have fled the country?
In the AP version run in the Thursday Seattle Post-Intelligencer, at least, the one explanation not mentioned is that the decline in deaths might have something to do with the success of the U.S. military's Surge.
It reminds me of the stories about high prison incarceration numbers. They are high, one hears, even though the crime rate has gone down. It doesn't occur to reporters providing such coverage that crime might have declined precisely because so many criminals have been caught and incarcerated. And it may not occur to the AP (unless this was just an editor's error) that the reason deaths of US service personnel have declined might have something to do with growing success in combatting the terrorists.
Why avoid the obvious?
