Effectiveness Note

Back in September I wrote about the effectiveness of the insurgent attacks in Iraq on US and coalition forces. I noted that although incidents had gone up from April to August, the killed in action for our side had not gone up nearly as much. The effect was that the effectiveness of the insurgents could be said to be going down.

General Casey had an interesting press conference the other day. Among other things, he mentioned:

Now these levels of violence since Fallujah have dropped dramatically. And they are actually now down at the levels prior to Ramadan and really right where -- back where we were at transfer of sovereignty. So the levels of violence have come way down.

I do not -- they are not necessarily operating effectively against coalition forces. In fact, when we look back, the numbers of attacks don't necessarily produce a very high volume of casualties. In fact, a lot of the attacks are in fact ineffective against coalition forces. They are frankly more successful against civilians and in some cases against Iraqi security forces.

It is good to get some confirmation of the general thrust of my argument and that it may have continued after August. I will update the chart at some point. It will be interesting to see how the Fallujah offensive affected the numbers and trends.