Post Coverage

Post Coverage:

I see from this morning's Washington Post a piece of very good news in Iraq: the killing of al Qaeda's emir in Samarra.

U.S. troops tracked Hamadi al-Takhi al-Nissani, al-Qaeda's "emir" in Samarra, to a safe house north of the city Friday morning, the U.S. military said in a statement. As the soldiers approached the house, Nissani fled and was killed. Two other armed insurgents in the house were also killed, according to the statement.

Police in Samarra who spoke on condition of anonymity gave a slightly different account, saying that the house was east of the city and that the three men were running to a getaway car when fire from an American helicopter killed them.

Either way is fine, really.

On Thursday night, U.S. troops also arrested Abdul Qadir Makhool, another al-Qaeda leader in Samarra, and released a police officer who had been kidnapped by the group, Maj. Jamal Samarraie, an officer at the provincial Joint Command Center, said in an interview.

The U.S. military referred to capturing an armed insurgent in a statement on Friday but did not give the man's name or say precisely when he had been captured.

Good job, Post. Now, here's the bad news:

A) This article comes from page A10. On page A1? A story about difficulties training the Iraqi army.

B) Also on A1, there's this article on State Department statistics showing a spike in terrorist attacks in 2005. The spin on this is that it is bad news, and that Iraq represents about a third of all worldwide attacks.

Yes, it would be better if there were fewer terrorist attacks, because everyone simply put down their weapons and stopped fighting us. On the other hand, a rise in terrorist attacks -- if coupled with a sharp drop in other kinds of attacks -- can signal that the enemy has lost the strength to fight in any other way.

In 2003, we saw combat in Iraq featuring armies; in 2004, uprisings in cities and regions across the country, including both a Shi'ite insurgency led by Sadr and an al-Qaeda led insurgency in the west. Neither survived the US military, and in 2005 we saw mostly terrorist attacks and snipers.

That's the missing context. That is why a "spike" in terrorist attacks is not a sign of an insurgency waxing in its strength. It is the sign of an insurgency that is losing strength.

This is a major complaint with war reporting. We get the numbers -- the number of dead troops, the number of attacks, etc -- but no context for understanding the numbers.

COUNTERCOLUMN has yet more context for the situation.