Glenn and Charles link to this sob story about how burials are down at the (huge) Najaf cemetery so now we're supposed to feel sorry for the soon to be unemployed staff there! One the surface, Glenn's certainly right about what outrageous MSM spin-reverse-meistering this is.
But it's even worse than he suggests when you get out your spreadsheet and chart wizard.
Whenever I read an article where numbers are thrown around ranging from "soared" to 150 per day to 6500 per month -- hmm, it's kind of hard to quickly compare furlongs per fortnight to miles per hour, no? -- as casual evidence for the storyline, I get suspicious. Of a cover up, innumeracy or -- all too often lately -- both.
So let's take the key numeric assertions listed in article in varying units and out of order sequence and normalize and sequence them (see chart -- numbers from article highlighted in table above, my conversions in white cells).
Isn't THAT interesting!
No wonder they quoted the numbers in varying units -- when normalized they show a downtrend culminating in a most recent month's daily burial rate lower than that quoted for the (non war) 1990s under Saddam! Best to leave that storyline left untold by the MSM, no?
Obfuscating the unfavorable-to-MSM storyline? Innumeracy? Both?
Yes.
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