Updated charts the military provided to NEWSWEEK showed that the number of attacks around the country dropped back to pre-Ramadan levels when the holy month ended at the beginning of October. Attacks – everything from bombings to rifle fire to destruction of oil lines – occurred less than 250 times a week throughout Iraq in the first two weeks of this month. September had seen a blip during Ramadan, but that was just a fraction of the violent spikes during previous Ramadan months (as marked in yellow columns on the chart). It's still a disturbing rate of attacks to live through on the ground and Iraqis grew increasingly stressed when there were several days in a row of prominent bombings or assassinations. But it's nowhere near the all-out mayhem of mid-2007, when there were nearly 1,600 incidents in a week:

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The second chart shows civilian deaths as counted by U.S. and Iraqi officials. This shows that deaths are down to just below levels seen previously in 2006, what was already seen as a dangerous and unstable time:

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