Mission Accomplished Scorecard

By Libby

I'm sure you know today is the anniversary of Bush's famous announcement that major combat operations had ended in Iraq. That narrative has changed many times in the four years since, and so have the metrics -- none of them really for the better. Think Progress runs down the numbers and a few stand out.

In particular, I'm struck by the difference in the Iraq security forces who went from 7,000-9,000 members to 334,300 at the present day. I have to wonder why it is that their force is now about twice as great as our own and we're still doing the bulk of the fighting? How many more forces need to be trained before they can stand up for themselves?

Meanwhile, the number of insurgents was estimated at less than 5,000 and is now thought to be in the range of 70,000, and that's just the Sunnis, while insurgent attacks have risen from 8 per day to 148.9. Again you have to ask, why a combined force of 480,000 troops are unable to quell the violence perpetrated by under 100,000 guerrilla fighters.

I'm no mathematician but I don't see any way to add these numbers and come up with anything except a sum failure of policy and priorities from the very beginning of this misadventure in imperialism. Furthermore, for all the dire predictions about the horrible consequences of our withdrawing troops, given these numbers it seems difficult to believe it could be any worse than what will happen if we continue this ill-fated occupation.