The Smarter Darren Bernard

Gee, can't the spinmeisters make up their minds?

Earlier last week we had this:

Iraqi officials today attributed a sharp drop in civilian deaths to a US-led security crackdown that began in February. At least 1,227 Iraqi civilians were killed in June - the lowest total since February - along with 190 policemen and 31 soldiers, an officer from the interior ministry operations room told the Associated Press.

The numbers were a 36% drop from the ministry's May figures - 1,949 civilian deaths along with 127 policemen and 47 soldiers.

But the figures could not be verified independently, and many deaths are believed to go unreported. The Iraqi government recently decided to withhold civilian casualty numbers from the UN.

Now we have this:

Nearly five months into a security strategy that involves thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad, the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets of the capital was 41 percent higher in June than in January, according to unofficial Health Ministry statistics.

During the month of June, 453 unidentified corpses, some bound, blindfolded, and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. In January, 321 corpses were discovered in the capital, a total that fell steadily until April but then rose sharply over the last two months, the statistics show.

Overall, the level of violent civilian deaths in Iraq is declining, according to the U.S. military and Health Ministry statistics, and there has been a steady drop in fatalities from mass-casualty bombings that have torn through outdoor markets, university bus stops and crowds assembled to collect food rations.

But the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets is considered a key indicator of the malignancy of sectarian strife. While the declining number of bombing victims suggests that efforts to control violence are showing some success, the daily slayings of individuals, in aggregate, speak to an enduring level of aggression.

So which is it? Is the surge creating slightly less bodies, or is it a resounding failure?