Iraq by Numbers

Statistics matter. And statistics don't matter.

Read that by one of my favorite Iraqi bloggers, a painfully immediate writer. And read this, beside it, by Michael J. Totten, one of my favorite observers of the daily realities of the American project over there:

Iraq is a painful country. It hurts those who live there, and it hurts those who go there. It isn't the saddest place I've ever visited – Libya earns that dubious distinction. But it is the most distressing, not only because of the violence and horror almost everyone who lives there has experienced, and in many places still experiences, but because it's hard to shake the dreadful feeling that terrible forces are gearing up to punish the place even more.

I don't know how people see all that and conclude, "we have to walk away from that all right now."