The researchers, a political scientist and a health economist, studied data about insurgent attacks and U.S. media coverage up to November 2007, tracking what they called "anti-resolve statements," either by U.S. politicians or in the form of reports about American public opinion on the issue.

The study, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, uses quantitative analysis, a statistical tool employed by economists, to empirically test for the first time the widely held nostrum that public criticism of U.S. policy in Iraq encourages insurgents there.

"We find that in periods immediately after a spike in anti-resolve statements, the level of insurgent attacks increases," the study says. In Iraqi provinces that were broadly comparable in social and economic terms, attacks increased between 7 percent and 10 percent.

The study also found that attacks increased more in parts of Iraq where there is greater access to international news media, which its authors say increases the credibility of their findings.

"We identify a possible emboldenment effect by comparing whether anti-resolve statements �� have differential impacts on the rate of insurgent attacks in areas with higher and lower access to information about U.S. news. This difference-in-difference approach isolates the effect of information about the level of U.S. resolve from the many other possible sources contributing to variation in insurgent attacks."

The researchers conclude that the increases in attacks are a necessary cost of the way democratic societies fight wars and say they are concerned that the research may be seized upon by the Iraq war's supporters to try and silence its critics.

"We are a little bit worried about that," Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government told United Press International in an interview. "Our data suggests that there is a small, but measurable cost" to "anything that provides information about attitudes towards the war."

But he added the cost was outweighed by the benefits of vigorous debate about military undertakings.

"There's a body of research, which we cite �� that suggests that public debate about strategy helps the military to fight wars more effectively," he said.

His co-author, Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard, said their data also showed that the insurgents in Iraq are rational actors -- responding strategically to changing perceptions of their enemy's will to fight -- rather than fanatics irrationally driven by ideology alone.

"We hope the main takeaway (from the study) would be in terms of counterinsurgency policy," she said, adding that seeing insurgents, and insurgent groups, as rational actors should underpin "an increased use of deterrence-based strategies" and the employment of more "carrot-and-stick approaches" by the U.S. military.

Nevertheless, the study's headline findings led some war critics to question their methodology, and in particular, the way they count "anti-resolve statements."

To avoid making their own subjective judgments about what might constitute such a statement, the researchers told UPI, they counted two kinds of news stories. In addition to "the release of major polls regarding American attitudes towards the war in Iraq," their index includes mentions by senior Bush administration officials of "statements or actions by other U.S. political figures that might encourage violent extremist groups in Iraq."

"To avoid having to determine ourselves whether a statement was 'anti-resolve' or not" Iyengar said, the researchers decided the best path was effectively "letting the administration make �� the judgment call."

She acknowledged that the measurement might seem arbitrary, but added that the point of the survey was not to examine the actual numbers, but rather to look at trends.

The study "relies on differences over time and space," she said. "We are comparing changes, not absolute numbers," so the important thing about the measurements was that they be "consistent over time."

The study has been submitted to the Quarterly Journal of Economics for peer review.

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