US dismisses leaked Iraq chaos report

The White House Wednesday dismissed a leaked military chart that shows Iraq sliding toward "chaos" as an outdated snapshot of sectarian violence at the height of Ramadan that has since dropped sharply.

The US Central Command prepared the color-coded bar chart as part of a slide presented at a classified briefing on October 18, according to the New York Times, which ran the slide on Wednesday with a story about it.
"That was a snapshot taken at the height of the Ramadan violence," said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.

"If you got the same report last week, you would have found out the national sectarian incidents from the 21st to the 27th dropped 23 percent; casualties nationwide dropped 23 percent; incidents of sectarian violence in Baghdad dropped 23 percent; sectarian killings in Baghdad dropped 41 percent," he said.

Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said it was "really regrettable that slides of secret or classified materials manage to get out."

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