America strikes back! Then bumbles the body counts.

Another week, another crippling blow to the foundation of our empire. What ought to have been a nice little post-Thanksgiving whetting of the national bloodlust turned into an international fiasco as a gang of army spokesgoons went into a collective epileptic seizure after a battle you never should have heard about.

I was deeply distressed by the performance of the army spokespeople following the incident in the Iraqi city of Samarra, in which a convoy of American troops was attacked by an undetermined number of insurgents, leading to a deadly firefight that pissed off most everyone in the town who was not actually killed in the incident. The chief spokespeople on the American side?Col. Fred Rudesheim, Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmit and Lt. Col. Ryan Gonsalves?mangled the post-firefight spin so badly that large numbers of people around the world came away believing that we were actually guilty of something. What had been a decisive victory over children and the elderly was thereby turned into a military loss in the eyes of the world.

All of this could have been avoided by following a few of the basic do's and don'ts of counterinsurgency spin. Among them:

Keep your eyes on the ball. The catastrophe in Samarra was not born of military necessity, but rather narcissistic frustration on the part of the army leadership in Iraq. Tired of seeing news about American or allied deaths appearing in American newspapers every other day, the army clearly decided to break its public losing streak by sending home a cheery battle report with a nice big number of enemy dead. And it worked?the first day. On Monday, Dec. 1, the cream of the American daily newspaper crop?the New York Times, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Washington Post and most of the Knight-Ridder papers?all led with triumphant front-page headlines announcing a huge military victory for our boys. The Globe headline was typical: "US Forces Kill 46 in Iraq battle." The Times head was similar: "46 Iraqis Die in Fierce Fight Between Rebels and GIs."

This was good news, but even these headlines didn't go far enough, which was a bad sign from the outset. While the Times, Globe, Post and others were nice enough not to quote civilian witnesses or Iraqi hospital workers in their battle stories that day, they were all also disappointingly ambiguous in describing who was actually killed. It wasn't "US Forces Kill 46 Evil Bastards Who Deserved It," just "US Forces Kill 46." That left the door open for troublesome follow-ups the next day.

At this point it is probably necessary to give a brief account of what happened in Samarra. All sides more or less agree that an armored U.S. convoy of about 100 soldiers escorting a supply of new Iraqi money was attacked by insurgents as it passed through town. A firefight ensued and people died. Gonsalves, Rudesheim and Kimmit claimed there were 60 attackers and that the majority was killed. (The official number was 46 the first day, 54 the next). Civilians and local Iraqi authorities claimed that there were only a dozen attackers and that only eight or nine were killed?all of them civilians (including a 73-year-old Iranian pilgrim and an Iraqi woman). All sides agree that the insurgents fired first, but the discrepancies over the body count led to follow-up reports all over the world suggesting something was amiss.

The problem is that the U.S. side got the numbers wrong. In fact, it was not 46 or 54, or even eight or nine people who were killed. There was really only one person killed, that being the lone U.S. casualty. If the U.S. had just stuck to its policy of only announcing important deaths, then Samarra would have been just like any of two dozen incidents in Iraq during recent weeks: a little wart on the face of a developing democracy that tragically resulted in the death of an American serviceman.

But the army was tired of not taking credit for all of the ass it's been kicking, so it sent out that big number, along with a lot of gleeful lip-smacking. "They got whacked and won't try that again," a senior Pentagon official told the Times.

The problem with body counts is that they only improve morale during a war, and we are not at war in Iraq. Thanks to our efforts in removing the repressive Ba'athist regime of the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq is now a free, peaceful nation. Large numbers of battle dead, no matter whose, only spoil this picture.

A point could be made that not publicizing the event in at least partial detail would have led to accusations of a cover-up later on. But that's the important part?later on. Why make a big mess on the front pages of the important media just to avoid a whiny e-alert two months later from the people at FAIR and CounterPunch? Even Sy Hersh is dismissed as a crank these days. The better plan is to let those six people have their day in the sun, and go on kicking all the ass you want?in private.

Avoid estimates. In these situations, the army really gets in trouble with transparent silliness. It is important to remember that persons who are silly are seldom also fearsome. Our current president is of course a glaring exception to this rule, but that does not mean that following his example is desirable or even possible.

That's why this whole business of describing the number of dead as an "estimate" was such a mistake. Rudesheim in particular emphasized the use of this word, pointing out that the "estimate" of 46 was based on soldier interviews. Several news networks enthusiastically followed suit, noting that the army no longer uses body counts, but estimates.

How can you estimate a number like 46 or 54? Granted, those are both fine numbers, pleasingly exact and a great improvement over more suspicious numbers like 50 or 55?but they're lousy estimates, unless we're in the business of killing fractions of people. Since the numbers are a lie anyway, it makes more sense to stick to one exact figure and stand behind it, rather than give yourself away with an estimate to the fourth decimal place.

Check your math. Gonsalves, on the other hand, really screwed things up by being too exact with his numbers. He came up with the figure of 60 attackers, 46 of whom were killed and 11 captured. Meanwhile, Major Gordon Tate explained the lack of bodies on the streets by saying they were probably gathered up quickly and buried according to Muslim tradition. Other army spokesmen echoed this explanation. Nice touch, that?attributing the apparently supernatural disappearance of bodies to the mysterious and no doubt satanic customs of our dark enemy. But it made it possible for people like Agence-France-Presse to point out that with 46 dead and 11 captured out of 60, only three survivors would have been left to drag away all of those bodies and bury them before the ambulances arrived.

If that were true, they probably would have still been there, haggard from lack of sleep and covered with dirt, by the time the American reporters arrived the next day. Therefore it would have been better to claim that there were 150 or 200 attackers, although political considerations would have made this undesirable.

There were other problems. Leaving wounded, crying children whose parents had just been killed as living witnesses, insisting upon the easily refuted claim that all of the attackers were in Fedayeen costumes, announcing that everyone killed was an insurgent even as tv cameras rolled over the bodies of elderly men?all of this hair-splitting just leads to trouble. Whatever happened to killing them all and letting God sort them out?