Two statements, two graphs

1. “We’re winning in Iraq, things are getting better”

(via globalsecurity.org)

You can say that things might get better in the future; you might be able to say that events are indicating that this will happen (though if you can say that an election with a rigged candidate list over a small proportion of the population is a giant leap for democracy with a straight face I’ll be impressed, and I’m not sure what else there is, but you could say that and not be instantly laughed at).

What you cannot say is that “we are winning in Iraq” when every indication is that the insurgency is becoming more and more active.

Steve Gilliard’s blog piece covers this in considerably more detail.

2. “The insurgents in Iraq are just terrorists, bombing civilians and causing chaos”

(an impression that it would not be hard to receive from news reports, but then from news reports you’d think that the military were barely ever attacked)

The graph comes from a report (PDF, interesting reading) by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. That bar at the bottom is attacks on Coalition military forces. Civilians are sixth from the bottom. You can also look at these graphs from the NYT with a similar message if you like.

Attacks on civilians make up around 4% of the total, and note that this is just going to be including attacks that cause civilian casualties, rather than attacks necessarily specifically against civilians, since, well, how do you tell? Even if you lump in a lot of other groups such as the police and the unspecified category, it’s clear that the vast majority of attacks are being made on the occupying forces.