Statistics are quite weird to say the least.

For example, it is likely that the US may hope that since 40 per cent of the Iraqi people is aged under 14, a more rapid change in the minds and hearts of the growing population could be possible... But the US would have to know that this would be a very long shot... Of all the youth, many have seen family members killed by the war, directly or indirectly by US troops. Sectarianism, a problem before the invasion, has bloomed in the new environment and one has to realise that 10 year-old kids at the beginning of the war are now 15. They may be ready to fight whomever. The CIA counts that about 5 million Iraqi are "fit for military service..." But the rate of desertion, already very high, could shoot through the roof should one revoke the voluntary enrollment.

Unemployment in Iraq is counted as between 18 to 30 per cent, by the CIA. But it is likely to be 40 per cent as the figures of employment are vague... According to the CIA, the labor force is estimated to be 7.4 million out of a population of 27.5 million of which 40 per cent is under the age of 14 and about 3 per cent is above 65. Discounting many women who are not working and the displace people, the figures do not stack up, unless many kids are counted in the figures... The median age is 20 and is a very strong indicator of poor conditions, not favorable to survival. For example Britain boasts more than 11,000 people above 100 years and France about 20,000 (the Brits are somewhat jealous of the diet) for similar size population... As well, in Iraq, a lot of kids die. Kids also used to die from the shortage of medicine due to embargoes before the war...

The number of dead Iraqis is a very sore point for many observers as during the war, and after the "Mission Accomplished" stupid statement too, the US has refused to do "body counts". Conservative web-sites place the dead as around 100,000 as a direct result from the war. But it could be estimated within reason that 40,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed during the invasion while about 30,000 civilians would have died. Since then, officially, the Iraqi have lost about 1,000 a month, this over 60 months. thus the tally cannot go below 130,000. Official Iraqi government figures put the death toll at between 110,000 and 150,000 as war deaths.

But on sampling of population in 2006-7, serious statisticians have established that at least 700,000 Iraqi had died, with a margin of 4 per cent error. Results were published in the Lancet. On these figure alone, by now the "true" body count would be 1 million dead.

The CIA admits to 2.0 million Iraqis having fled Iraq and about 1.9 million having fled into refugee camps within Iraq. As well the CIA place 45,000 people from other countries seeking refuge in Iraq... The Iraqi population is in a flux. And, as mentioned above, it is a very young population. And it is poor mostly, living in bad conditions, unlikely to improve in the near future. These circumstances are creating a powder keg... Hopefully it will not blow up. But the longer the US troops stay in Iraq the more they are likely to lit the fuse by friction, accidentally or deliberately... People will be more and more ready to die for "freedom" and die they would, as the US troops are fully armoured and fairly-well protected. The most vulnerable part of the US troops then would be their hearts, as basically a major revolt would mean shooting defenceless poor wretched people on the rampage, people rising in the desire to be themselves....

In the USA, more than 43,000 people die on the roads every year. In the five years of the Iraqi war, 220,000 people have died in road accidents compared to 4018 US soldiers fighting a "simmering" war.

Weird numbers.... In the same period too there was about 150,000 murders in the US (rate per 100,000 people being four times more than in other civilised countries).

About 1 million people have been injured on the roads in the US compared to 30,000 injured US soldiers in Iraq. Thus the rate of injured on the roads in the US is about 0.4 per cent while the numbers of death is 0.07 per cent in 5 years

The true comparison of course should be based on the US population (300 million) versus the rotating US arm forces in Iraq (515,000). This place the US army death toll in Iraq at 0.8 per cent and compared to any numbers of soldiers in Iraq at any one time (on average 150,000), at 2.6 per cent. For the wounded the average for 515,000 troops is 6 per cent, while per 150,000 it is around 20 per cent. It can be estimated that of these 20 per cent about 5 per cent are fit to return "to combat".

Another 5 years and most likely a similar figure will carry through, unless the Iraqi find a way to unite and fight the "invaders"... But the US is firmly counting on the Iraqis being divided, although the Iraqi may show a bit of illusionary "unity"... With their country wrecked, the Iraqis have little choice but to rely on "American help" to survive, not even mentioning fighting sectarian violence with violence.

The US are building a few permanent bases in Iraq, including the huge embassy complex in the green zone. No matter who will be commander in chief after the next elections in the US, the US troops are groomed to stay for another 25 years minimum.

There are more than 115 billion barrel to be pumped: at 100 dollars a barrel, this represents the small fortune of 11.5 trillion dollars just for the crude. Imagine that the price will be around 200 dollars a barrel in three to five years. Considering on average the value of petroleum products can be up to 100 times that of the crude, there is a big magic pudding here. Yep the future for the oil under the Iraqi sand dunes is worth no less than 1150 trillion dollars. as much as 10,000 trillions in 25 years' time... To spend 6 trillion dollar on troops to control the oil output is peanuts... So far the US have only spent 3 billion of which 2 billion directly re-flow into the general economic slush-fund by paying the wages of armament makers — workers, engineers and CEOs... And the cost is borne by IOUs held by foreign countries...

But statistics hide the fact that people — people who could have been like us, in a country that could have done better — have died, will die or will be poor, angry and hateful forever... The blood that has oozed in violence will take a long time to dry in the mind of people, even if it washes away quickly in the streets under a bucket of dirty water.

The Iraqi war was totally unnecessary, un-called for, no matter how the perpetrators tried to convince us of their own "convictions" for it, in which they had to know before going warring, these convictions were baloney in which they could not have believed in...

Bush is a murderer — (the last one of the tragic trio of leaders, still powering psychopathically along), no matter how noble his motives could have been. His primary motive was as grubby as they come: greed, greed greed. And his method was to lie and to massage public opinion with more lies. Bush has hoped that once his foray was happening, there would be no point of return...

On this point he could be right: the damage has been done.

Stats don't matter, especially if you're dead.

By supporting Bush, we were and are murderers too. All for oil, oil oil...

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A third rocket landed just outside a checkpoint at the entry of the Green Zone, sheering off the corner of a building and wounding five Iraqi civilians. The rocket landed 50 yards in front of vehicles driven by employees of The New York Times.

The force of the rocket, one employee said, ripped a four-inch-deep hole in the road’s tarmac surface.

“All the cars started speeding toward us, like cockroaches out of a drain, trying to get away from there as quickly as possible,” the employee said.

Mohammed Razak, 16, who works at a bakery on the first floor of the building that was hit, went back to work soon afterward.

“The souls are given to us by God and he is the one who decides to take them,” Mr. Razak said. “It’s our living and we have to keep working.”

Mr. McCreary, the Marinette general manager, said that while the shipyard might not have fully mastered the Navy’s accounting system, it had given the Navy frequent progress reports showing problems mounting.

Mr. Winter, the Navy secretary, complained that the Navy bureaucracy had failed to alert him to rising costs. The Pentagon, he said, was bedazzled by the idea of saving money and time with commercial technologies.

“It got oversold,” he said. “The concept was just abused.”

He lamented the Pentagon’s eroding expertise in systems engineering — managing complex new projects to ensure that goals are achievable and affordable — and faulted the notion that industry could best manage ambitious development projects.

“Quite frankly, industry is not good at doing this,” he said.

Recently, Mr. Winter said, he instituted new procedures to ensure tighter supervision of all shipbuilding projects. He says he is confident that the coastal-ships program will produce a fleet of fine, affordable vessels. But as he contemplates the Navy’s long-range rebuilding plans, he says he stands behind a scorching critique that he delivered at a convention in Washington last year:

“If we do not figure out how to establish credibility in our shipbuilding programs and plans, and restore confidence in our ability to deliver on our commitments, we cannot expect Congress or the nation to provide us with the resources we so urgently need.”

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Gus: Ah... private enterprise seeing a public cash cow in a leaky boat... Milk it till it sinks... but jump off just before it goes under, with the buckets full of creamy milk... Better still, milk if from an unsinkable platform of penalties, insurance and clauses while only the cow drowns.

Been done before.