This guy is a master at keeping his cool in the face of idiotic snark.

Here’s part 2.

In early June we wrote:

Statistically speaking, we have probably reached an irreducible minimum for fatalities in Iraq.

We stand corrected.

Total fatalities for US troops in Iraq dropped to 13 in July, an annualized rate of 0.118% (using 132,ooo for the number of US troops in country).

That’s about 3/4 the mortality rate for all US males aged 25-35 (0.15%, according to the CDC).

Actually, 13 is probably something of an overstatement. One of the fatalities was a Petty Officer injured on the deck of an aircraft carrier almost three years ago - he died in a Pennsylvania hospital last month. (And if we’re counting deaths of sailors, we should be using a troop count higher than the “in country” number of 132,000.)

Of the four combat-related fatalities, two were soldiers killed months ago, their bodies recovered in July.

So there were really only 10 “in country deaths in July”, with only two combat related. That’s an annualized mortality rate of 0.091%. The only adult demographic segment where the CDC shows a lower mortality rate is white females aged 19-24.

Also consider, while two out of 132,000 US troops were killed in combat in Iraq last month, two Chicago police officers were killed by criminals over 4th of July weekend. There are 13,600 cops in Chicago.

In the month of May 19 US servicemen lost their lives in Iraq. (Actually, 2 women and 17 men.)

That’s 19 out of 140,000 troops, or an annualized one-month mortality rate of 0.16%, the lowest of the war.

Back in April 2003, when the press and politicians of all stripes were mesmerized by the low casualties we were suffering, the US saw 74 deaths on 92,000 troops - 4x the fatalities and 6x the mortality rate.

According to the CDC (Vital Statistics Report - warning, 120pp pdf), the average annual mortality for American males aged 25-34 is 0.15%. Two fewer US deaths in Iraq last month would have represented a lower mortality rate than that of a demographically comparable group of American civilians. Statistically speaking, we have probably reached an irreducible minimum for fatalities in Iraq.

Consider the higher mortality rate for African American males aged 25-34: 0.25%. The average civilian black male in that age group was 51% more likely to die last month that a US soldier in Iraq.

On a last-twelve-months basis the mortality rate of US troops in Iraq has fallen sequentially every month since August 2007, cumulatively falling 73% over that period.

Dems promise they’ll “restore America’s image abroad” once Bush is gone. In one rather important corner of the world, their message is not going over so well.

From Time:

The arrival of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who came to Baghdad on Saturday with a congressional delegation, set off a now-familiar cycle of reaction in the Iraqi capital. First there was buzz around the city about flight delays from Baghdad International Airport, which goes into lockdown when VIPs land or takeoff. Since no dust storms were grounding flights, anyone traveling could have assumed some American bigwig was heading in. But when local TV reported the visitor was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, there was a collective shrug of the kind you might expect from Republicans catching a glimpse of her somewhere in McCain country.

Pelosi is something of a nonentity to average Iraqis. If they know who she is at all, she is generally seen as an antiwar caricature figure, someone whose views on U.S. troop withdrawals are widely considered unrealistic. Pelosi has said she wants to see most U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the 2008, a time frame virtually no Iraqi political leader sees as feasible. Not even Mahdi Army militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiercest advocate of a U.S. withdrawal on the scene, has called for such a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces. Rather, Sadr contends that the Americans should simply announce a reasonable timetable for the departure of U.S. forces.

The lack of popularity of Pelosi’s views was evident in the fact that her first day on the ground Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not make an effort to see her. Maliki is currently in the northern city of Mosul overseeing a crackdown on insurgent networks there. But the city has been largely quiet in recent days, and there was no obvious pressing reason for the prime minister to skip Pelosi’s arrival.

Pelosi may not get much more warmth from the American military leaders she plans to meet either. Pelosi argued against sending additional surge forces to Iraq, a plan overseen by Gen. David Petraeus that is now widely credited with reducing the levels of violence in Iraq. Moreover, Pelosi made waves on Capitol Hill in November by saying U.S. troops were torturing detainees - an accusation generally not taken well by men and women in uniform of any rank….

Dem foreign policy ideas go over well in Pelosi’s home district of San Francisco and among the Mandarin eunichs in DC. But our allies and service personnel in Iraq see right through it. Too bad for Obama that Hamas doesn’t have a vote.

Probably the best indication things are improving in Iraq - the media don’t want to talk about it much any more. From Pew:

According to the News Content Index conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the percentage of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined since last year, dropping from an average of 15% of the newshole in July to just 3% in February.

Great editorial in today’s WSJ by Bret Stephens. A bit wandering and thus difficult to excerpt. Read the whole thing.

Selected quotes:

…A nation in which the poor are defined by an income level that in most countries would make them prosperous is a nation that has all but forgotten the true meaning of poverty. A nation in which obesity is largely a problem of the poor (and anorexia of the upper-middle class) does not understand the word “hunger.” A nation in which the most celebrated recent cases of racism, at Duke University or in Jena, La., are wholly or mostly contrived is not a racist nation…

…The problem with Iraq today is that it is a net importer of terrorism and instability. Yet when the U.S. invaded, it was a net exporter of both. An improvement? On balance, probably yes. Since Iraq regained its sovereignty in 2004, it has had two presidents and three prime ministers. This is too much in the Italian mold of government. Yet who, outside of the CIA, wants to return to the strongman model?…

…(A)cross the way is the hulk of the old Deutsche Bank building, critically damaged on 9/11 and slated for destruction. In an attempt to ensure that not even trace levels of asbestos and other unpalatable elements would escape the wreck, a meticulous plan was devised to dismantle the building floor by floor, at a price exceeding that of its construction. In August a fire broke out, and two firefighters died after getting lost in the maze of internal scaffolding erected to keep the asbestos in. Those brave men lost their lives for the sake of an EPA standard, and there’s been no work to speak of on the building since. It’s a case of the perfect becoming the enemy — the mortal enemy — of the good…

…There is great virtue in the American way, which expects CEOs to perform on a quarterly basis, presidents and Congresses to reinvent politics in 100 days, generals to wipe out opponents in 100 hours without taking significant casualties, doctors to save life and limb every time, search engines to yield a million results in less than a second, and so on. There is also great virtue in the belief that what is bad can be made good, and that what is good can be made great, and that what is fractionally less than great is downright awful.

But these virtues can spawn vices. One is impatience. Another is a culture of chronic complaint. A third is the belief that every problem has a solution, that trial is possible without error, that risks must always be zero, that every inconvenience is an outrage, every setback a disaster and every mishap a plausible basis for a lawsuit…

Nice question…watch them squirm:

December is now over in Iraq, and it looks to be the month with the second fewest American fatalities since the beginning of the war in March 2003. It was also the best month in terms of Iraqi civilian deaths, Iraqi police and military deaths, and US wounded.

23 American troops were killed in Iraq in December. That compares to 112 in December 2006. The first month of the war, when many marveled how few casualties we were suffering, saw 65 US deaths.

Only February 2004 saw fewer Americans killed (20). But that month was, unfortunately, something of an anomaly at the time - 47 were killed the month before and 52 the month after.

But December 2007 was a continuation of a clear trend. October, November and December, with a total of 96 deaths, were the safest three months in the entire war. That rolling three month total has been coming down for the last 6 months, basically since General Petraeus’ “surge” strategy was implemented.

Annualizing December gives a mortality rate of 252 out of about 130,000 average troops, or 0.194%. That’s not that different for a demographically comparable group of US civilians - in 2005 the CDC reported a mortality rate of 0.143% for males aged 25-34 (that’s all races, black males in the same age group had a 2005 mortality rate of 0.253%).

And its worth noting the causes of death. 14 of the 21 deaths in December were attributed to “hostile action” (the rest were “accidents”, or “illness”). According to a recent Forbes article, the most dangerous job in America is “Fishers and Related Workers” with a workplace fatality rate of 0.142%. That’s about 10% more dangerous than workplace (i.e. hostile action) fatalities in Iraq.

Looked at another way, 14 Americans were killed by hostile action in Iraq in December, 11 American police officers were killed here “in the line of duty” in the same month.

Here

From the London Times:

Is no news good news or bad news? In Iraq, it seems good news is deemed no news. There has been striking success in the past few months in the attempt to improve security, defeat al-Qaeda sympathisers and create the political conditions in which a settlement between the Shia and the Sunni communities can be reached. This has not been an accident but the consequence of a strategy overseen by General David Petraeus in the past several months. While summarised by the single word “surge” his efforts have not just been about putting more troops on the ground but also employing them in a more sophisticated manner. This drive has effectively broken whatever alliances might have been struck in the past by terrorist factions and aggrieved Sunnis. Cities such as Fallujah, once notorious centres of slaughter, have been transformed in a remarkable time.

Indeed, on every relevant measure, the shape of the Petraeus curve is profoundly encouraging. It is not only the number of coalition deaths and injuries that has fallen sharply (October was the best month for 18 months and the second-best in almost four years), but the number of fatalities among Iraqi civilians has also tumbled similarly. This process started outside Baghdad but now even the capital itself has a sense of being much less violent and more viable. As we report today, something akin to a normal nightlife is beginning to re-emerge in the city. As the pace of reconstruction quickens, the prospects for economic recovery will be enhanced yet further. With oil at record high prices, Iraq should be an extremely prosperous nation and in a position to start planning for its future with confidence…

…The instinct of too many people is that if Iraq is going badly we should get out because it is going badly and if it is getting better we should get out because it is getting better. This is a catastrophic miscalculation. Iraq is getting better. That is good, not bad, news.