Iraq Debate Is Sea of Statistics

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington in this July 27, 2007, file photo. "What is really going on? What standards should we look at? Where do we go from here?" asked Skelton in a later hearing - questioning which statistical analysis about Iraq to believe. ( AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) (Susan Walsh - AP)

WASHINGTON -- In vertical bars of blue, green, gray and red, a briefing chart prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency says what Gen. David Petraeus won't.

Insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians, their security forces and U.S. troops remain high, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. It is a conclusion that the well-regarded Army officer who is the top U.S. commander in Iraq is expected to try to counter when he and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, testify before Congress on Monday and Tuesday.

More than four years into a conflict initially thought to be a cakewalk, the war has become a battle of statistics, graphs and conflicting assessments of progress in a country of more than 27 million people.

The defense intelligence chart makes the point, with figures from Petraeus' command in Baghdad, the Multinational Force-Iraq. Congressional auditors used the same numbers to conclude that Iraqis are as unsafe now as they were six months ago; the Bush administration and military officials also using those figures say that finding is flawed.

With so much depending on how the statistics are collected and interpreted, policymakers in Washington are confused.

Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, summed up the situation during a hearing last week on the report by congressional auditors at the Government Accountability Office.

"What is really going on? What standards should we look at? Where do we go from here?" asked Skelton, D-Mo.

For every positive step, a negative one follows.

Progress by the Iraqi army is offset by the failures of the national police, which an independent assessment rates as "operationally ineffective."

Nearly 77 percent of Iraqis want the militias in Iraq to be dissolved, according to the GAO, yet their government has not written legislation to do so.

While the rights of Iraq's minority political parties are protected in the legislature, the GAO said violence against minority religious and ethnic groups continues "unabated" in most areas of Iraq.

The report used the defense intelligence's countrywide figures to conclude that the average number of daily attacks against civilians has remained "about the same" during the past six months.