Iraq War Injury and Fatality Data. Not Good.

Over at Thoughts from Kansas, Josh has a great post with fabulous (from a statistical POV) charts of the fatalities and injuries from the Iraq war. I wish the news were better, but every regression line is up up up, even beyond rates at the time of the invasion:

"In the time before the 'Mission Accomplished' speech on the aircraft carrier, an average of 3.26 American soldiers per day were killed. An average of 3.71 American soldiers died each day during May."

And as if the data wasn't bad enough, he ends with this chilling thought:

"Whether or not that surge in violence corresponds to a change in weaponry, but surely does indicate growing technical ability of the insurgents. It's hard to look at these data and not remember a comment made by a Marine in Iraq, who complained that when his squad went on patrol after a day of marksmanship training with local police, insurgent snipers got a lot more accurate. The extent to which we are training and equipping our own enemies needs to be investigated. Ideally, before the line of fatalities (below the fold) climbs even higher)."

Somebody do something.