The Opinionated Bastard: Cheerleading from the Pentagon

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November 3, 2005

Cheerleading from the Pentagon

These are from the Pentagon's report to Congress, which you can download here

Here's an interesting bit from the end of the report, before I show you all the pretty graphs:

U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraq as their mission is successfully accomplished. As noted in the July report, criteria for withdrawing Coalition Forces from Iraq are conditions-based, not calendar-based. There is not a timeline or milestones that directly tie the drawdown of Coalition forces to increased numbers of capable Iraqi battalions. Drawdown will occur in a phased, gradual manner as Iraqi forces become capable of taking the lead within areas of Iraq and in concert with Iraqi progress in political and economic capabilities.

and

Transfers will be effected on an area-by-area basis and will occur only with the approval of the Iraqi Prime Minister, the U.S. Ambassador, and the Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq.

So we may pull out of 90% of Iraq before we pull out of the last little bit.

So the Pentagon points out that the Iraqi's have basically decided its stupid to boycott elections, better to vote and participate:

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Compare this to June:

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Tips are up:

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Some areas are safer then others (data from July):

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You can see why Anbar province is a problem. Baghdad has most of the people, but Anbar contributes way out of proportion:

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Which this graph shows most effectively:

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Now in the July report, they tried to show that the number of attacks a week was trending downward. Which meant they needed to include the same graph in the October report:

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But who knows if this means anything as they expected attacks to go up during the referendum, and the coalition was cleaning out Anbar province this month.

This shows that things have been getting worse for the Iraqis, as I've been saying:

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