[Mb-civic] <no subject>

[Allison Burnett]

So much for Dale¹s assertion the other night at dinner that it¹s getting
better over there.

 Report Says Number of Attacks by Insurgents in Iraq Increases
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By JAMES GLANZ

Published: February 9, 2006


WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 ‹ Sweeping statistics on insurgent violence in Iraq that
were declassified for a Senate hearing on Wednesday appear to portray a
rebellion whose ability to mount attacks has steadily grown in the nearly
three years since the invasion.
  
Ebb and Flow of Attacks in Iraq


 The statistics were included in a report written by Joseph A. Christoff,
director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability
Office, who testified before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee during a
hearing on Iraq stabilization and reconstruction.

 The American military declassified the statistics so he could present them
to the hearing in his report, Mr. Christoff said in an interview. The
figures cover attacks on American and Iraqi forces and civilians.

 The curve traced out by the figures between June 2003 and December 2005
shows a number of fluctuations, including several large spikes in insurgent
activity ‹ one as recently as October of last year. But while American and
Iraqi officials have often pointed to the downward edges of those
fluctuations as evidence that the steam was going out of the insurgency, the
numbers over all seem to tell a different story, Mr. Christoff said. "It's
not going down," he said. "There are peaks and valleys, but if you look at
every peak, it's higher than the peak before."

 Officials have recently noted that the numbers of attacks in the final two
months of last year dropped after an October peak, which occurred around
both Ramadan and a referendum on Iraq's constitution. But Mr. Christoff's
chart shows that the number of attacks in December, nearly 2,500, was almost
250 percent of the number in March 2004.

 But the trend line began even before March 2004, when the number of attacks
was already nearly double what it had been in July or August 2003. Mr.
Christoff's paper cites a senior United States military officer saying that
"attack levels ebb and flow as the various insurgent groups ‹ almost all of
which are an intrinsic part of Iraq's population ‹ re-arm and attack again."

 Attacks against Iraqi security forces have grown faster than the overall
count; by December 2005 they had grown more than 200 percent since March
2004. Of course, as more Iraqis are trained and put into the field, more of
them are targets.

 The paper, citing a contracting office in Iraq, said that as attacks had
fluctuated downward in the final two months of last year, attacks on convoys
related to rebuilding efforts had risen. Twenty convoys had been attacked,
with 11 casualties, in October 2005, while 33 convoys had been attacked,
with 34 casualties, in January 2006, the paper says.
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