So how bad is Iraq? Check the Chart

With 5,000 estimated insurgents on one side of the scale, and over 2,500 repaired and fully operational schools on the other, I think an objective look at the data (click on the Graphic: Op-Chart link) shows that we are doing quite fine in Iraq.
It is funny how the text of the presentation on one hand will say that the North and South of Iraq, making more than 60% of it’s mass, are calm, and yet say that “President Bush went too far on April 13 when he said that ‘most of Iraq is relatively stable.'” It is relatively stable, and 5,000 insurgents in a country of 23 million is nothing.
That is not to say that America is doing as good as can be; the low rates of the health care clinics renovated, to say the least, is troubling, and there are still 9,500 schools needing repair. Electricity is still down, as is oil production, and foreign fighters make up 1 out of every 10 insurgents, showing that the borders are sufficiently porous for trafficking of every kind.
What the data also shows which is troubling is the high rate of unemployment. If Europe and the rest of the non-troop sending world really did care about the stabilization of Iraq, they would send business contracts and give businesses that move some of their operations to Iraq tax-breaks. If I were the Iraqi people, I would lay the challenged quite plainly: “you think you have ‘soft power?’ prove it.”

Advertisements