Dazed And Confused

I'm starting to think that the reason I'm so confused by the reports on Iraq is because that's the way the preznit wants it. Here's a fun quote from a WaPo story as they also try to decipher the latest "violence is down" meme:

The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."