The Opinionated Bastard

The Brookings Institute has the numbers.

But I've gone through it and extracted the things I found most useful.

My feeling is that these next few months are going to be a turning/tipping point. Things will either start dramatically improving, or get dramatically worse.

Now various soldiers that are currently in Iraq have been commenting that they feel a tipping point is coming, and I think it might be true, though its not apparent from the numbers yet. What is apparent is that the insurgents have become terrorists. They are no longer attacking coalition forces or even oil facilities. Instead, they are pointlessly killing civilians.

I suspect the civilians have noticed, and that's why the populace has started turning against them in increasing numbers.

Anyways, look at the graphs and reach your own conclusions.

(click to popup a larger version)

Pretty much, we have trouble in the Red areas, and they love us in the green areas. I've said it before, I'll say it again: We need generators more then tanks...

The non-combat fatality bump in January was due to traffic accidents. The number of traffic accidents increased because of a major US troop rotation during that month.

Cool, thanks.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

So I've been discouraged the last couple of days because while July was a low month for soldier deaths, August has been a terrible month so far.

So I decided to dig in and see how those deaths were adding up. How many come from defensive operations as opposed to offensive operations, and how many are IEDs vs. direct attacks?

That meant reading through all the press releases for the last 99 days. You're welcome to check my math. Here's what I found:

I read these once a week, here's what I see:

Well, a week has gone by so its time to look at the latest brookings report and numbers from icasualties.org.

As I said before, fatalities in August are going to be higher then in previous months. The Brookings report has them at 65 so far. Breaking the fatalities out by week we can see that even without August 4th when 20 soldiers got killed in two separate attacks, the weeks have been pretty heavy.

So even before the week of the 4th, we were getting about 12 fatalties/week in Iraq. Though its also obvious that there are good weeks and bad weeks.

Something you can tell from looking at the press releases that you can't tell from these numbers is that no longer are the biggest chunk of the fatalities coming from the Haditha area. So perhaps that Operation Quick Strike worked, the intent was to push the insurgents out. They've tried that before of course, but this time they pushed in multiple areas so the insurgents would have nowhere to run to.

The wounded number is always a bit less volatile, it shows the number of servicemen wounded as 364 about halfway through the month. So August will probably show a peak there was well, though it has slowed down quite a bit lately.

Interestingly enough, attacks on Iraqi Policemen have slowed down quite a bit. It's too soon to tell, but August may show a slight decline in IP deaths since January. Similarly, Iraqi civilian deaths and car bomb attacks are lower then I would have expected.

So basically, if the US goes rooting after the insurgents, the low-key civil war that is going on in Iraq slows down, but our casualties go up as the terrorists move from shooting at the civilians and police to shooting at us. Attacks on oil and gas infrastructure are way down as well.

Every month, about 3,000 more Irai Police go on duty, though it will take about 10 more months before there are more Iraqis then US soldiers in Iraq; there are about 98,000 on duty now.

Electricity is not quite as good as July, but much better then it has been in the past, which is good. We're going on 3 months now with more electricity available then there was before the war. The problem is though that the Iraqis are doing better then they were under Saddam, so they all have more toys nows...

So overall, I would say that Iraq is better for the Iraqis, slightly worse for our troops at the moment.

Fester is my favorite blogger on the left, because he actually knows how to think instead of scream.

Here's a post of his arguing the other side of my argument that the insurgencies switch to IEDs indicates they are becoming less effective. Read it here.

Of course, I disagree with it, and he's posting press pieces that are either a month old, or are talking about a single event that happened a month ago. IEDs are basically just mines, and don't indicate the ability to take and hold territory. It's worth pointing out that there are more Iraqi Police and soldiers now in Iraq then there are coalition troops.

But I thought I'd link to a counter point.

Then in September.

October:

47%: Right Direction 37%: Wrong Direction 14%: Don't Know

September:

43%: Right Direction 42%: Wrong Direction 14%: Don't Know

Source: Brookings Iraq Index, p 32

So here's the latest chart (all charts “popup”):

So are things getting worse in Iraq or better? That's the question I keep asking myself, and why I keep reviewing the Iraq Index report from the Brookings Institution.

October was always going to be a tough month. There was increased activity by US forces in clearing out Anbar province, and there was going to be increased activity from the insurgents because of the elections.

So let's look at the graph. A huge jump up in IED deaths this month. Most of them were in the last few days of the month, but still quite a big jump. IED deaths have been trending upwards for awhile now, but I see this as a losing strategy for the insurgents. You can't hold territory with mines.

Meanwhile, although all the other numbers were higher than September, many of them are lower than past months. A big chunk of the deaths this month were from car crashes and other non-hostile causes; this happens whenever there is a troop rotation in Iraq. The hostile file number I find especially interesting as typically when the Coalition is very active, this number rises. In both September and October, this number was lower than expected. So I'm thinking that perhaps the operations of August and September were effective enough to drop the deaths from hostile fire to a lower level.

So in context, all these numbers are lower than I expected, except for IED deaths. Woundings, which I use to indicate the operational tempo of the troops are holding steady, so even though deaths are high this month (92) perhaps that's just luck, or the fact that the Baghdad troops have less experience with IEDs than the Anbar province troops.

Now this is interesting. The number of Iraqi military and police killed keeps falling:

Now realize that there are now many more IP then there used to be, which means that being an Iraqi Policeman is getting dramatically less dangerous even faster then that graph indicates. So day-to-day security may be improving dramatically in Iraq. The next graph kind of hints towards that:

According to this graph, things have been dramatically improving for the Iraqis since August.

In polling, Iraqi's are a little more optimistic:

So bottom line, better or worse?

Hard to say. Getting the constitution passed was definitely a milestone. There are now enough IP on duty that coalition forces are starting to take territory and turn it over to the IP, so that's a big milestone. In fact, I expect we'll be leaving in August 2006. They'll be having a bunch of political campaigning leading up to the December 15th elections, and while that stirs up the insurgents, it calms down the population as they get involved in the political process. The Iraqis themselves are more optimistic, even before the constitution passed they said so in polls. Electricity was down slightly this month, but demand is down more as it gets cooler in Iraq.

So better, slightly. Lots more work to do.

Meanwhile I found yet another report to look at, this one from the Pentagon. You can download it from here.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Over at Security Watchtower. He's taken the numbers from the Brookings report (that reminds me, have to do that today) and broken the insurgency into 4 phases:

1. The Rise (May 2003-March 2004 - 10 months)
2. The Peak (April 2004-November 2004 - 8 months)
3. The Decline (December 2004-November 2005 - 12 months)
4. The Defeat (December 2005-December 2007 - 24 months)

Needs some charts though. :-)

My monthly analysis of the Brookings Institute Iraq Index report looking for trends. Enjoy.

Update: The DOD has commented that there will be 225,000 Iraqi troops available by December 15th for the election, so that means about 10,000 per month. So 10 months to get to 325,000 so perhaps October of 2006 to reach the target goal for Iraqi troops.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Pajamas Media put me onto this poll of the Iraqis.

Here are some charts to explain the data a little more clearly:

Wow. 70.6% of the Iraqis say their life is good? Were things this good under Saddam? Guess not...

Life is better for most Iraqi's then it used to be under Saddam. Is this temporary?

Nope, 60% of Iraqis think things will be even better a year from now! (Inshallah means “god willing”, and is just me being funny, it really means “don't know” from the survey). Looks like the Iraqis are a victim of their own media though, while most of them are doing better, more of them think the the country isn't doing as well:

Though they are even more optimistic for the country as a whole a year from now:

The top 3 things Iraqis thought would be the best thing that could happen to Iraq would be:

1. Security
2. Peace and Stability

3. A better life

   The fourth choice was American forces leaving Iraq, but that was only 5.7% of the count (more people answered “not sure”). An Islamic government was .1% with only 2 people choosing that. Of the things people chose from their list, over 90% of them expected that “best thing” to happen would happen in the next year.

Iraqis think Democracy is best:

And they have high hopes for the elections:

There's lots of data in the survey, I just picked out the ones I thought needed graphs the most. Here's a fun one though:

In fact, overall, the Iraqis were pretty open-minded about women:

There was bad news in the survey as well, I just expect you can get that from the regular media. In a nutshell though, they think the coalition sucks, but they don't want us to leave quite yet.

I'd started slacking off on these until the end of the month, but given the Iraqi Election, I felt it was worth doing one to measure all the things leading up to the election.

The update is out, so its time to analyze the numbers from the Brookings Iraq Index report again. This is going to be especially interesting, because there was the election in mid-December. I did an analysis of the report in mid-December just prior to the election here just so I could compare the pre and post election periods now.

All previous analyses are here

Technorati Tags: Brookings, Iraq

John Wixted sent me this as a comment to my last Brookings report analysis, I thought I'd share it with you all.

Basically:

2004: 10,000 Iraqi deaths

2005: 7,500 Iraqi deaths

So Iraq has improved year to year by that metric. 26% better!

Technorati Tags: Brookings, Iraq

Like most of us, I'm sick of the war.

I feel like a kid in a long car trip. “Are we there yet?” Since 1920, the US has been trying to stabilize the Middle East. If Woodrow Wilson had been successful then in creating a democratic Middle East we would be facing a very different world today. Unfortunately, he was sick (its possible he had a stroke, this was long before MRIs and CAT scans); the French and British took advantage, and we're in the mess we're in today.

Unlike our news media who seem unable to see even last week, my view of the War in Iraq tries to gp at least back to 1920 when the Middle East was effectively created because the British and French wanted to play games there. This problem is 86 years old now. The solution is, and always has been for the people of the region to control their own destiny.

Logically, I wouldn't expect a problem 86 years in the making to go away overnight.

But I don't care. I want this thing over dammit. Screw logic.

Of course, what I want and what reality provides are two different things. For that matter, reality and the coverage of the war are two different things. That's why I started reading blogs and started blogging. I'm trying to get the perspective the major media aren't giving me. Since my job basically involves analyzing financial data, my contribution to all this is looking at the numbers.

Last month, I got a lot of flack for saying December was better then November. Well friends, it's all about perspective. The news media doesn't give us any perspective. Its hard to believe Iraq is getting better when you see 130 people died on the news. I realize that. But 130 people dying on a single day doesn't really mean anything without perspective.

Its harder for the insurgents to kill 130 people then it is to kill 10 or 20. It's more newsworthy for them, but if that attack means that they weren't able to carry out 19 smaller attacks that killed 10-20 people, they're doing worse. Larger attacks but happening more rarely, and in more obscure places can actually be good news. Larger attacks also piss off more of the populace because more of the “innocent” are killed, which ends up meaning more tips to the police and such.

In other words, it takes a month for me to know what is happening in a month, because from looking at the data, that's how long it takes for things to settle out. Figuring out how the war is going takes multiple months, as well as conversing with actual witnesses.

So for those who feel I'm “lying with statistics”, well, that's what the media does by denying you perspective. I'm trying to provide that perspective by asking the simple question: “Was Iraq better or worse last month?”

So bottom line, December was better then November. Was January better then December? Well, lets see. As for February, ask me in March.

Technorati Tags: Brookings, Iraq, Terrorism

So with all the doom and gloom on the news, I was looking forward to the Brookings report to see what was really going on.

In February, US soldiers killed in action or wounded has gone down for the 4th straight month in a row (all graphs popup):

Technorati Tags: Brookings, Iraq

Bad News:

My previous post relied on the Brookings Iraq Index, which itself relied on the body count numbers from Iraq Body Count. Turns out though that IBC hasn't included any civilian deaths since Feb 22, the date of the shrine bombing. So the numbers I have for civilians are way off. They probably won't be updated for awhile, the Iraqis can't actually agree how many people died either, some say 300, some say 1300. (Note that Iraq Body Count already reports a high-low number.)

Usually these sorts of numbers are way off. 10,000,7,000, 5,000, 3,000, 2,823 people died on 9/11.

100,000, 50,000, 10,000, 5,000, 1,104 died as a result of Hurricane Katrina

So who knows what the truth will be. For that matter, Saddam couldn't be bothered to have a census, so even the past numbers on IBC which tries to be fairly conservative could be off since they're relying on press reports.

Good News:

Another blogger caught it: Liberalism without Cynicism

I said it before, but I started blogging because I subscribed to the State Department's daily briefing post 9/11 and I was shocked. The media can't even transcribe what the administration says accurately...we might be better off with stenographers then “journalists”. Someone better warn Linda that if she starts fact checking the media, she may become a Bush supporter. That's what happened to me...

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Terrorism

My last update missed an important point, which a commenter pointed out: Iraq Body Count hadn't updated their civilian deaths since the shrine bombing when I did my monthly analysis of the Brookings Iraq Index report.

Unlike the media, I like it when people fact check me. It means I learn something.

I had to wait for an update to the Brookings report, so I have new numbers for the civilian deaths in February, some new graphs about troop levels, and a new conclusion.

It's time for me to do my update on Iraq based on the Iraq Index from the Brookings Report. I was on vacation last week, so its one week late.

Technorati Tags: Brookings, Iraq

After several straight months of declining casualties, casualties jumped back up to the level seen in September of last year (all graphs popup):

The big jump this month was mostly from IED deaths as you can see. Deaths from “hostile fire” is up this month as well. This was the second worse month in terms of IED deaths since last Jan:

Deaths among the Iraqi Police is steady:

So in general, things were obviously worse for our soldiers in Iraq last month. They're not as bad as they been in the past:

But still disappointing after so many months of declining numbers.

Woundings were constant:

We lowered the number of troops in Iraq slightly:

While the number of Iraqi Troops continue to increase:

I found a significant flaw in the Iraq Index data for civilian deaths. The “upper bound” is actually just the lower bound multiplied by 1.75, based on the assumption that 75% of the deaths go unreported. So I'm dropping the “upper bound” from this chart.

I've also pretty much decided this data is fatally flawed because its based on Iraq Body Count, which is based on media reports, which themselves are often guesses. The data is also stale, March's total from IBC has completely changed since I last looked at it. So here's a graph, but realize that April is probably a totally bogus number:

The car bombing data on the other hand, seems to be more up to date:

So as far as car bombings go, things are about the same in Iraq.

So bottom line, was Iraq better or worse in April? Definitely worse. Is it the worst its ever been? No, not really, things have been much worse in the past. I hope that May's numbers shows this as a local peak, but of course, I won't know what those are until June.

As for those of you who think Iraq is in a civil war, I have to say, you've never seen a civil war. Take all these numbers and multiply them by something between 10 to a 100 for a civil war. You're thinking too binary; there's a scale between peace and civil war, and Iraq, while not peaceful, is closer to that end then they are the civil war end. The number 4 is greater then zero, but its much less then 10 for Iraq's sake.

For that matter, Saddam was killing 10-20,000 Iraqis a month when he was in power, so its useful to keep these numbers in perspective. Iraq is more chaotic than under Saddam, but less deadly overall. Strange but true, but the wholesale slaughter of Saddam was worse then this retail mucking about between the Coalition and the insurgents.

Though to be honest, I wouldn't find the assertion that Iraq is in a civil war half as offensive if half of you didn't seem to be gloating. Remember your humanity guys; no matter whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, it should be a bad thing that Iraqis are dying. It will be a bad thing if America loses this war. Keep your eye on the ball.

For those of you who want world peace, well, so do we all. But its a two step process:

1. World Justice
2. World Peace

Sorry, but you have to do step 1 before step 2.

Let's hope the Iraqis respond well to their new government. Hard to believe the elections were in January and it took this long...

Technorati Tags: Brookings, Iraq

The first Lancet study was ridiculous, which meant that the hippies immediately seized on it as gospel. “100,000 people killed in Iraq”.

The latest one was even more silly.

Even the guys over at Iraq Body Count agree says the Lancet numbers are as bogus as ever.

In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.