Conclusive evidence: Things are worse in Iraq, not better!

Taking a fresh look at current realities on the ground, (since so much has been made recently on the changing conditions in Iraq,) according to the Administration and senior Republican Senators, the American people are not being brought up to date on the "good" news that things are really much better than before and that this "new strategy" by President Bush is working, according to these pronouncements.

Since we do not have actual measures of success, the only way one could know if things are truly better in my view is to look at U.S. Casualties. I have been posting on this topic recently but I wanted to take a fresh view today and look at both short term results (one month) and longer term (4 month and 8 month periods). If there truly is improvement it should show in the numbers and trends. Since there is no accurate information on Iraqi deaths, the only real measure worth using is unfortunately U.S. Fatalities. So without bias I first present the data from i-Casualties.org which gets its data from the Department of Defense.

Note: this data below has been updated today, April 2nd, from previous listing as new fatalitiess were added after March 31st for the month of March by D.O.D.

Data from the most recent month, March, compared to March of the previous 2 years.
2007 82
2006 31
2005 35

This is a 165% increase over 2006.

Data looking back on a 4 month average for the periods of Dec. through March, for each of the same years.

2007 357
2006 216
2005 272

This is a 65% increase over 2006.

Data looking back on a 8 month average for the periods of Aug. through March, for each of the same years.

2007 667
2006 530
2005 619

This is an increase of 26% increase over 2006.

In summary the longer the period of time used, the lower the percentage. The more recent the data, the higher the U.S. casualties. This demonstrates conclusively that despite words by Senator's McCain and Lieberman and others, like President Bush and VP Cheney, to confuse the American public, they are all deceiving the American people. Things are not getting better, they are getting worse

UPDATE: 3:30pm PST And now if the data above wasn't enough to convince you, here's the late afternoon addition which states March totals show more U.S fatalities than Iraqi's.

By AP reporter Steven Hurst today late.

U.S. March toll nearly twice Iraq forces

"The U.S. military death toll in March, the first full month of the security crackdown, was nearly twice that of the Iraqi army, which American and Iraqi officials say is taking the leading role in the latest attempt to curb violence in the capital, surrounding cities and Anbar province, according to figures compiled on Saturday."

(For this complete AP story click here.)