More empiricism regarding Iraq

Max Boot tries to look at Iraq empirically, as I did earlier today. He isolates three indicators: casualties, nation-building, and abuses. (I did not consider abuses because I don’t think they have much to do with our progress or lack thereof and because I don’t know how one would measure this objectively). Boot thinks things are not going badly on these three fronts, and that the panic about our progress results from the fact that “we have been spoiled by the seemingly easy, apparently bloodless victories of the last decade. From the Persian Gulf War of 1991 to the Afghanistan war of 2001.”
Meanwhile, Arthur Chrenkoff provides valuable analysis and links regarding the progress of the reconstruction on many fronts. This is some of the best stuff I’ve seen on the subject. Scroll down and read the whole thing. Hat tip to Instapundit.