Iraq effort by the numbers

Iraq has less than 30 percent of the trained police it needs. Radios for the Iraqi police service are in short supply - as is body armor, with the sets on hand constituting only about one-third of the number required.

Meanwhile, insurgent attacks are widely spread throughout the country. While a majority occur in Baghdad and the hotbed of the Sunni triangle, few parts of Iraq seem immune. In August and September almost 16 percent of incidents involving coalition or Iraqi forces took place in the northern city of Mosul.

These figures come from the US government's official weekly status reports of the situation in Iraq. While unclassified, and widely disseminated within the government, these reports have generally not been made public.

They don't sugarcoat the situation, as the figures on police shortfalls show. But neither do they depict a country overwhelmed by chaos. Some aspects of reconstruction appear to have made progress: Iraq has more telephone subscribers now than it did before the war, according to status reports. And trend lines for some important security-force measurements are shown going up.

"We are involved in a low-intensity conflict. That should not be minimized.... But that doesn't mean you can't win this campaign, or more important that Iraqis can't win it," says Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington who has kept careful track of Iraqi statistics.

In the United States the intensity of the campaign for president has not made it easy to gain understanding into what's happening in Iraq. To President Bush, the situation is bright, and getting brighter by the day. To Sen. John Kerry, things are dire, with no improvement in sight. At times it seems as if they are talking about two different countries.

In this context, the Department of State's Daily Updates and Weekly Status Report, and the US Agency for International Development's Iraqi Reconstruction Weekly Update, provide at least glimmers of insight.

Take the status numbers on Iraqi security forces. The US has recently raised its estimate of the number of police Iraq will need by about 30 percent, to 135,000. About 85,000 are now on duty, but that figure has actually been declining of late, due to desertions and resignations.

Only about 33,000 on-duty police have been through adequate training, according to US figures. That trend line is going up, however, and may increase quickly under the direction of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who has taken charge of all Iraqi security training.

As for police equipment, the number of weapons on hand is something less than half of the requirement, as of the end of September. Vehicles on hand are about one-third of the requirement. All 135,000 Iraqi police are supposed to get body armor, but as of September only 42,941 sets were on hand.

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