When Good Statistics Do Bad Things . . .

My brain nearly exploded when I did some number crunching and found that more U.S. soldiers died in the Iraq war in 2006 than Iraqi soldiers.

Some 870 U.S. soldiers died, compared to 627 Iraqi soldiers.

What the bleep gives?

What gives is that these statistics don't tell the whole story. The whole story, according to people with whom I spoke who have spent considerable time on the ground in Iraq, is that the national police still do the brunt of the dirty work for the Iraqis.

Says Buck Sergeant from American Citizen Soldier:

"The Iraqi Police bear the brunt of the fight because they necessarily have the most day-to-day contact with the areas they patrol. Additionally, they live at home rather than on military compounds, thus they must commute back and forth to work each day which exposes them to kidnap and assassination which happens frequently.

" . . . the Iraqis indeed face most of the dirty work in the country, and have for some time now. Americans are only exposed to danger when they choose to be by leaving the confines of the FOBs [forward operating bases] and venture forth to do their jobs. Iraqis face it 24/7 and have little choice in the matter."

And Bill Roggio from The Fourth Rail, who is just back from a December embed with a Marine unit in Falluja:

"Police are easier targets. They drive thin-skinned vehicles by and large, while the Iraqi army has Hummers, Cougars, etc. The Iraqi army units I embedded with weren't on the roads much in vehicles, they mainly were doing foot patrols. Which are harder to target with IEDs, because dismounted soldiers can more easily ID the IED indicators and can hunt down the trigger man

"In Fallujah, the police suffered over 21 dead since the unit I embedded with got there four months ago. The police are better targets because they are a greater threat. Since they live in the communities, they are a better source of intel, know the lay of the land, and so on.

Bill says that the moral of the story is to never just look at casualty numbers.

"They don't tell the full story. I hate it when bloggers on the left use casualty numbers to show things are getting worse, and when those on the right use the numbers to show things are better than they seem. Its just a poor metric unless the goal is political points."

Amen.