A few Iraqi Measurements

So,

I haven’t picked on the President about much lately.

But before I do, let’s talk about the concept of metrics. I get measured at work. For that matter, I measure things at work. Mostly I measure statistics on my projects to determine how well things are going. Now what I measure are straight forward things. I set a goal, like “I want to build a big software system by such and such a date, with a certain budget and with a quality standard of some kind. Most of my goals work out something like this. Build xxx project for less money than my peers could, without killing any of my subordinates, and within some timeline everyone won’t gripe about. I check the statistics as my project goes along. I stay within goals and I usually succeed. For this ability my company has seen fit to put me in the 98 percentile of income in the U.S.

George is in the 99 percentile of income in the U.S. He claimed today in a press conference that things were looking up in Iraq. He indicated Iraq had had elections and the new government was meeting. Things are looking up. Note his metric is not really something you can measure like: “Are you on budget, on schedule or what not?” I guess he’s on schedule. The new Iraqi government met today. But does that answer whether things are looking up?

Welp, truth is most things are up in Iraq. Here are few stats told in terms corporations use a lot. --Comparisons to say monthly or quarterly results from a year ago.


US Troop Casualties

Wounded in Iraq (But survived.)

Jan 2003 - 0
Jan 2004 - 187
Jan 2005 - 789

Wounded in Iraq (But didn’t survive.)

Jan 2003 - 0
Jan 2004 - 47
Jan 2005 - 107

** Note in Jan 2003 the Operations Iraqi Freedom had not begun so statistics on actual deaths/injuries
in Iraq operations were not gathered, and have been extrapolated.


Here are a few other statistics:

Amount of capital outlay on the part of the U.S. government for operations in IRAQ

Jan 2003 $83,000,000 (Monthly cost of enforcing no-fly zone)
Jan 2004 $7,080,000,000 (Monthly cost of occupation.)
Jan 2005 $9,333,333,000 (Monthly cost of holding elections.)


Then there is the whole issue of Iraqi dead.

Number of Iraqi’s being killed by Americans

Jan 2003 – 0
Jan 2004 – 690
Jan 2005 – 869

**It should be noted most Americans are killing Iraqi’s shooting at or caught between them and other
Iraqis shooting at Americans. For those caught in the middle I don’t think they care much who shot
then, the end result was the same. But for the purpose of metrics it can be made significant.

Then the really revealing statistics

Number of Iraqi’s being killed by member so Sadam Husein’s Regime

Jan 2003 – 22 (This included convicted criminals)
Jan 2004 – 634
Jan 2005 – 1948 (They weren’t elected but still seem to wield influence.)

I COULD GO ON. BUT YES GEORGE, BY MOST MEASURES, THINGS ARE UP IN IRAQ.

Yeah George, I’m picking on you.