When Charts Are Worth a Thousand Words

The people for whom the Iraq war didn't really start until the surge got under way in January and have conveniently forgotten the rise of the insurgency because of a botched U.S. occupation, the battle for Falluja, Abu Ghraib scandal and onset of civil war are high-fiving over the news that U.S. casualties are at a 14-month low and civilian casualties are decreasing.

That is indeed good news, but as these two charts on four-year-plus war trends show they ignore two larger realities:

The Iraq war, even more than wars in general, is a cyclical affair and defeat has had a way of being plucked from the jaws of victory over and over again. And without political reconciliation, military gains mean little.

As I wrote here, the high fivers are the folks that the White House really needs to push back against people like myself who can see the forest for the trees and know that it will only be a matter of time before the screw again turns in George Bush's Forever War.

Click here and here for non-eye crossing images of the charts.

Hat tip to Cernig at NewsHoggers