Cakewalk

by digby


Via Laura Rozen I found this startling foreign policy index from the Democratic Policy Committee. Rozen and Democracy Arsenal highlighted a few of the items pertaining to Iraq:


Number of Iraqis who had access to potable water before invasion: 13 million

Number of Iraqis who have access to potable water, according to the April 2006 SIGIR report: 8 million

Number of Iraqi physicians registered prior to the invasion: 34,000

Number of Iraqi physicians who have been murdered or fled the country since the invasion: 14,000

Infant mortality rate in Iraq: (Middle East average is 37, sub-Saharan Africa average is 105): 102

Average number of daily attacks by insurgents in June 2004: 45
Average number of daily attacks by insurgents in June 2006: 90

Rank of Iraq on the “failed states” index: 4

Rank of Afghanistan on the “failed states” index: 10

Rank of Iraq among all nations as a training ground for terrorists:1


The last we heard from Joe Lieberman, (who isn't talking about foreign policy on the campaign trail, apparently) was that there was tremendous progress being made in Iraq, especially on the political front. Here's the index on the political situation:


Amount requested by the President in his Fiscal Year 2007 budget for democracy promotion in Iraq: 0

Percent of Iraqis who say they are optimistic about their future: 30 percent

According to a recent World Public Opinion poll, percent of Iraqis who approve of a timeline for U.S. withdrawal: 70 percent

Degree of corruption in Iraq on the Transparency International 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (on a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing “highly corrupt” and 10 representing “highly clean”): 2.2

Number of corruption cases that have been filed since the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity was established in 2004: 1,400

Approximate number of Iraqi families internally displaced as of February 2006 (prior to February 22 bombing of Shiite shrine in Samarra): 3,000

Approximate number of Iraqi families internally displaced as of June 2006, according to Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration: 21,731 or 130,386 people

Number of Iraqi civilians killed in May, according to data from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue: 2,669

Number of Iraqi civilians killed in June, according to data from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue: 3,149

Civilian death toll in Iraq in June 2006: 100 per day

Rank of Iraq in Minority Rights Group International’s list of peoples most under threat from persecution, discrimination, and mass killing: 1

The number of passports issued in the past ten months, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees:2 million

Percent of Iraq’s professional class that has left the country since late 2003:40 percent


You have to wonder what it would have looked like if it were going badly.


Update: The Poorman has a post up about one of those displaced Iraqis --- a catblogger named Raghda, whose family finally gave up and left the country.


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