Leaves caution behind

What Progress in Iraq Really Means

Some key extracts:

• Number of Iraqis estimated to have fled their country: Between 2 million and 2.5 million.
• Number of Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States in July: 57; only 133 for the year to date.
• Estimated number of Iraqi deaths from the invasion of 2003 through June 2007, if the Lancet study’s median figure of 655,000 deaths was accurate and similar death rates held true for the year since it was published: Just over one million, according to Just Foreign Policy. (The Lancet study has been the single, on-the-ground, scientific report on Iraqi casualties in these years.)

Percentage of Iraqis who cannot afford to buy enough to eat: 15%, according Oxfam.

• Percentage of Iraqi children who are malnourished: 28% (compared to 19% before the invasion); Percentage of babies born underweight, 11% (compared to 3% before the invasion).
• Percentage of Iraqi children now considered to suffer from learning “impediments”: 92%, according to one study cited by Oxfam.
• Percentage of equipment the Pentagon has issued to Iraqi security forces since 2003 that cannot be accounted for: 30%. That includes at least “110,000 AK-47 rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets,” according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). According to the Washington Post, “One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons probably are being used against U.S. forces.”