Even recent raw statistics understate the progress. Take these statistics from the Rashid district of Baghdad:
For example, we have reduced the number of attacks from 122 in April to 48 in July. This represents a 61 percent reduction. The daily attack average was four in April and has been reduced to 1.5 in July. Additionally, there were 18 rocket and mortar attacks in April and only three in July of 2008. This represents an 83 percent decrease. Regarding the IED, there were 69 attacks in April and 37 in July, and this is a 46 percent decrease. When we look at direct-fire attacks, we saw 30 in April and five in July. This represents an 83 percent decrease.
Add in this shading:
A signal that I see in the Rashid district is the quality of the improvised explosive device. When we see the Iranian-made explosively-formed projectile, we know that the pipeline has not been cut off. Less and less do we see these specific anti-armor improvised explosive devices. We're seeing homemade explosives, low quality, and many that have improper initiation systems. So not only are they -- have they not been very effective in the past 45 days, that -- we've actually been able to discover more. That means that the quality foot soldiers of the enemy have either been killed, captured or driven away and now the amateurs are at work in our area.
So IED attacks saw the lowest decrease from April to July, but their quality has degraded far more than the statistics would indicate.
Our statistics are best used in an unchanging environment if you want to compare time periods. But to win we had to change the environment. The point of war is to win and not to keep a stable environment for statistical analysis, of course. We have changed the environment by defeating our enemies and so have made the statistics less accurate in comparing situations before and after the change in the environment.
We are winning and we can't even quantify the extent of the accumulating victory.
