First, it helps to think about an army as a flow, not a stock concept. The size of an army is really the size of the force it can maintain for a given period of time; this is a function, mostly, of either the provision of soldiers as replacements or the rotation of units out of the theatre of war. Eventually, as in the second world war, even a replacement-based army has to take whole units out of the line, but let's keep it simple.
The surge was accomplished, essentially, by boosting the flow temporarily; bringing forward deployments from this year and the next. This made it possible to temporarily increase the strength by 28,500 men; but the crucial point here is that this is a borrowing from the future. As the units that were planned to rotate back to the US do so, which they have begun doing, they won't be replaced; the units that were to replace them have already been sent and will in their turn complete their tours of duty. Not only will the extra troops leave; the force in place will itself weaken. This can only be avoided if the US Army decides not to reconstitute its strategic reserve. The peak was 182,000 troops in October; we're already down by almost 10,000, or in other words a division equivalent.
This would be largely academic if committing the reserve had led to decisive results. But it has not; yes, there have been three reasonable months by 2006-2007 standards, but this is a claim that requires close examination. The press has effectively taken a holiday since the summer, and the US military PR men have become very keen to quote percentages ("Violence down 60%" - down 60% on what exactly?) but never any absolute numbers. Fortunately the Brookings Iraq Index is still going.
As far as their estimate of civilian casualties goes, the peak month was November, 2006; almost a third of the fall was between then and January. The rate of enemy action was at an all-time high as late as June, 2007, and was still running at 3,000 attacks a month in September. The five worst months for multiple-fatality bombings were all post-surge. The chief evidence for surge effectiveness is the drop in US casualties since August, 2007; that was a pretty bad month itself (84), but was also the moment of the Sadrist ceasefire. It's also noticeable that the rate of attacks on oil and gas installation went to near-zero in August as if a valve had been screwed shut; August was one of the worst months for oil production, but it has noticeably increased. However, oil products supply in Iraq is still at just over two-thirds of requirements; actually worse than during the worst period of 2006.
Electricity production is still almost one-third below target, and it only exceeded the figures for last year after the Sadrist ceasefire; it's also worth noting that the figures exhibit a strong seasonal variation, and have improved every winter since 2003 only to decline again in the summer. (The turn of the year is also usually a low point in casualties.) Further, it's worth noticing that the frequency distribution is not especially normal; 18 months out of 58 are over 1.4 standard deviations away from the mean, mostly on the bad side (the split is 5 low/12 high). In a nonnormal distribution you'd expect to find yourself that far from the mean at most one-third of the time, which is precisely what has happened.
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Regression to the mean has no divisions, but it's notable that all the worst months for US casualties are associated with a Sadr crisis; his six-month ceasefire expires roughly now. The US Army has used its strategic reserves and not achieved a decision; this is historically a very dangerous strategic moment. If you examine that Brookings pdf, you'll note that it includes some order-of-battle details; currently, some 7 US brigades are disposed around Baghdad and 3 more around the southern suburbs, and another six across the north, with one reinforced brigade in Anbar. There is currently a Polish battalion group at Diwaniyah and a National Guard infantry brigade based on Kut; nothing between them, and nothing before you get to the British brigade camped outside Basra.
It's Sadr's move; it always has been. And Diyala is still the battlefield; and the guerrillas still know that we're coming. Read Phil "Intel Dump" Carter. But what the hell; snark on this issue has been outsourced to Jamie Kenny.
For extra TYR points, it seems that there was a major clash between the Iraqi Army and the Sadrists in Basra over Christmas (during which the IA discovered a cache including a *drone*). This is not going to be conducive to the renewal of the Sadrist ceasefire.
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