There was a story the other day that was opened up at Josh Marshall’s TPM Muckraker indicating that the Pentagon has not released statistics for individual attacks in Iraq for the months of September, October, November and December, 2006.

Now, I know that’s very surprising to our regular readers, because after all we know how forthcoming Bu$hCo has been about news and information. Surely it was just some clerical error? Perhaps the PFC clerk in charge of updating the graph was on leave, or on sick call?

On the cited page, the inclusive graph looks fairly much like a rising tide, and a man with a working brain might make inferences about the missing months.

You can see a larger version of the chart here. It tells a pretty compelling story -- part of a compelling story. It was produced in December, but it's missing data for the months of September, October and November of this year -- a period of increased violence, according to news reports. What gives?

I called Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO official who produced the document. "I have all [the Pentagon's] data" for those months, he told me. But the military stamped it classified, he said. And despite making weeks of phone calls, he can't convince anyone there to declassify the numbers.

"They give conflicting reasons," Christoff told me. "For some reason, they haven't gotten through their bureaucracy."

News accounts from the period indicate that violence has increased since August, and the rate of U.S. casualties has accelerated. October was said to be particularly bloody.

Ah.

Conflicting reasons. Yes. [multiple throat-clearing sounds, dimly-heard tuneless whistling.]

Three days later,

I just got a call from Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a spokesman for the Defense Department. I relayed to him my conversation with the GAO official, who said the Pentagon was refusing to declassify data showing the number of enemy attacks in Iraq for the months of September, October and November.

"That's an interesting accusation from your source," Ballesteros said. As it happens, the Pentagon is releasing a report today at 5 p.m. on "back trends in violence" in Iraq, he informed me.

Does it contain the three-month attack data the Pentagon declined to allow the GAO to include in its report?

Ballesteros paused. "There's information about attacks. Okay?" he replied. "Why don't you wait until 5 o'clock?"

According to another official, the report will be posted to the DoD Web site, at http://www.defenselink.mil.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2006 – Increased violence in Iraq threatens, but so far has failed, to stop progress on the political and economic fronts and in building Iraq’s security forces, according to the Defense Department’s latest quarterly report to Congress, released today.

DoD delivered “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” to Congress today. The report, the sixth report of its kind, evaluates political stability, economic activity, the security environment, and security force training and performance between mid-August and mid-November.

…

All hopes were for 2006 to be the year Iraq’s new government would get on its feet, Rodman said. However, he pointed to the Samarra Golden Mosque bombing, and the cycle of sectarian violence it sparked, as giving “partial strategic success” to insurgents that they previously couldn’t achieve.

…

This progress is notable, the report recognizes, particularly in light of escalating violence in some of Iraq’s most populated regions. Attacks increased 22 percent during the three-month reporting period. Although 68 percent of those attacks were directed at coalition forces, Iraqis suffered most of the casualties, according to the report.

[Loud, single toned whistle, followed by a muffled “22 per cent. Shiiiit.”]

UPDATE: HTML coding repaired to make article more logical.