Yesterday Greg Sargent sniped at the much-discussed Michael O’Hanlon/Kenneth Pollack op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, charging O’Hanlon with ignoring his own data, collected for the Brookings Iraq Index. (Andrew Sullivan, of course, swallowed Sargent’s argument whole.)
Sargent’s critique, though, is based entirely on the July 26 edition of the index. There’s a new (July 30) installment, taking into account data collected during the trip to Iraq that prompted the O’Hanlon/Pollack op-ed. The data show encouraging signs, not only compared to recent months, but even correcting for the seasonal ebb-and-flow of violence. This is the first July since the war began that has seen fewer multiple-fatality bombings than the previous July.
