Perspective

I know that the domestic media is trying to brow-beat us into a declaration that Iraq is now completely awesome because John McCain invented the Surge -- which is false on so many levels and was a bad thing for Al Gore even though the latter never actually claimed he invented the internet.

But of man, did I digress.

Juan Cole has some perspective:

Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll.