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:
...
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:
...
