August 6, 2005 by lonbud
Paint By Numbers
There is no getting around the fact that we live in a rich world of complex interactions that often make life and its events seem difficult to understand. This complexity drives whole industries and branches of scientific research, whose existence is predicated on a mission to explain everything from the causes of hypertension and heart disease, to price activity in world markets, to the feeding and mating habits of insect colonies, to the behavior of value maximizing consumers.
Humans are enthralled with statistics, and more often than not, people employ them to explain or justify behaviors and policies across the entire spectrum of social and organizational activity.
I have written previously about the dubious reliability of using statistics to try and depict things in larger context, but just now I’d like to share a few items from the August Harper’s Index, a monthly compendium of interesting, odd, and anomalous facts and figures that often serves to shed enlightening perspective on the current state of affairs:
80,000 — The number of new U.S. soldiers the Army would need in 2006 to replenish ranks abroad.
9.9 — The percentage of this goal the Army expects to meet.
84 — The percentage change since 1996 in the average recruitment cost per new U.S. soldier.
Regardless whether one believes in the necessity or wisdom of the Bush administration’s War in Iraq, it seems clear it is taking a toll on both the volunteer army our nation employs, and on the costs of constituting it.
4 — The number of people killed or captured in the Global War on Terror who were identified by the U.S. media as Al Qaeda’s “number 3” man.
200 — The number of people convicted on “terrorism-related charges” since 2001, according to Alberto Gonzalez in April.
39 — The actual number convicted on charges related to terrorism or national security.
One of the “incredible triumphs” cited by the U.S. Department of Justice as evidence that the U.S. is winning the War on Terror is the case of Hemant Lakhani, a seventy year-old failed clothing merchant from London, who claimed to be a well-connected arms dealer able to procure anti-aircraft missiles for what he believed to be a Somali-based terrorist group.
In fact, Lakhani’s only previous experience in the international arms trade consisted of helping with the legal sale of eleven armored personnel carriers to the government of Angola, a deal that took him nearly three years to complete.
A few months after 9/11, Lakhani had the misfortune of sharing drinks with a career FBI informant, who played both Lakhani and the FBI for patsies in a sting operation that ended up requiring the entrapment efforts of both the U.S. government and the Russian Federal Security Service before Lakhani was finally apprehended the following year in a Newark hotel room with a shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft device he had no idea how to operate.
After Lakhani’s April conviction on charges of “attempting to provide material support to terrorists,” President Bush cited the case as “a pretty good example of what we’re doing to protect the American people.”
Yup. Lord knows we need to be protected from hapless old Hindu fantasists who can be conned into brokering an arms deal in which the U.S. government puts up the money and the Russians provide the “material support” for an FBI stool pigeon posing as a Somali terrorist.
I smell a Hollywood blockbuster.
150,000 — The number of Iraqi troops that have been “trained and equipped” according to President Bush in April.
1,500 — The number that the U.S. military considers ready to deploy independently.
Well, it’s a “long hard slog,” as Donald Rumsfeld warned us from the very beginning.
At the prevailing rate, by May 2, 2013 –ten years after Mr. Bush stood on the deck of the USS Lincoln and declared the “mission accomplished”– U.S. taxpayers will have paid $900 billion (and some 9,000 U.S. troops will have paid with their lives) to train and equip an Iraqi force of 7,500 soldiers ready and able to defend the first fragile democracy in the Middle East.
Go right ahead and assail those statistics from either side of the great divide across which we stare at each other, and at the future, with incredulity and misapprehension.
The financial markets use a standard disclaimer that may well be the most honest thing in that industry’s entire lexicon, and which everyone should keep in mind when appraising the validity of statistical information, especially as a predictor of events to come: past performance is no guarantee of future results.
I’ll end this post with one more link, courtesy of the entertaining and informative War Room, edited by Tim Grieve at Salon.com. Press the red button. Sometimes words are just superfluous.
Michael Herdegen - August 7, 2005 @ 2:11 pm
80,000 — The number of new U.S. soldiers the Army would need in 2006 to replenish ranks abroad.
9.9 — The percentage of this goal the Army expects to meet.
From ABC News, June 1st, 2005:
The Army was 16 percent behind its year-to-date target entering May, with a goal of signing up 80,000 recruits in fiscal 2005, which ends Sept. 30.
The Marine Corps missed its goal for signing up new recruits for four straight months entering May and was 2 percent behind its year-to-date goal. It hopes to sign up 38,195 recruits in fiscal 2005.
From USA Today, June 29th, 2005:
Army recruiters enlisted 6,157 new soldiers this month, 507 more than its goal, Army officials said Wednesday. […]
Through June 27, the Army had recruited 47,121 new soldiers in 2005. That’s more than 7,800 below the number it needed to be on track to meet its goal for the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.[…]
Through the first nine months of this fiscal year, the Army has averaged about 5,200 recruits a month.
***
The Pentagon additionally expects recruitment to be strong through the summer months.
Therefore, the Army will meet 90% – 95% of its fiscal ’05 recruitment goals.
Why should we expect ’06 be substantially worse ?
Further, the active Army is meeting 100%+ of its re-enlistment goals.
Even further, assume that the U.S. Army recruited NO new people in fiscal ’06 – we still have well over 80,000 soldiers sitting in Europe and South Korea that could be re-deployed to Iraq, if needed.
150,000 — The number of Iraqi troops that have been “trained and equipped” according to President Bush in April.
1,500 — The number that the U.S. military considers ready to deploy independently.
The 1,500 number refers to the Iraqi Special Forces, who are, indeed, quite good.
There are also two divisions of the Iraqi regular Army that are fairly capable, so that’s another eight to ten thousand competent troops.
As for the rest, there are tens of thousands of police officers who are included in the “trained and equipped” number, who are just that, but they occasionally need military back-up.
To say that therefore they aren’t trained or equipped for their tasks is like saying that every American small-town police force is inadequate, because they don’t have a SWAT team.
The Iraqi police CANNOT function without American military backup – but they are more than capable of handling everyday police functions, so that the American military no longer has to handle such.
The 150,000 number is bogus, but the real number is significantly higher than 1,500 – maybe 50,000.
In any case, I’ll put my $ 100 against your $ 50 that by Jan. 1, ’07, there are 50,000 or fewer U.S. troops in Iraq.
E-mail me at oroborous11@aol.com if anybody would like to put some money on it.
Michael Herdegen - August 7, 2005 @ 2:22 pm
Excuse me.
The recruitment fulfillment sentence should read: “Therefore, the Army will meet 80% – 85% of its fiscal ‘05 recruitment goals.”
lonbud - August 7, 2005 @ 3:01 pm
One of the classic approaches to statistical refutation involves the marshaling of still more statistics that might appear to contradict those originally offered, but which in fact do not relate to them.
We can’t really know whether the Army will meet 80 – 85 percent of its recruitment goal in 2006, or whether it will meet shy of 10 percent, as the stat I quoted says. The source for the quoted statistic, according to Harper’s, is the U.S. Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, KY.
Perhaps, in the minds of our deluded leaders and their most loyal patriot supporters, all Iraq needs is a few good cops to root out the bad apples and bring the shining promise of democracy to every small town in the Euphrates Valley.
Unfortunately, Iraq is not plagued by small-time grifters, traffic scofflaws, and the odd drunk.
Rather, increasingly deadly bombs are exploding throughout the country on a daily basis, and the country may be just as close to imploding into civil war as it is to bursting forth with the joys of freedom.
The source for the 1500 Iraqi troops ready to deploy independently figure is the U.S. Military Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad.
You may well be right about there being 50,000 or fewer U.S. troops in Iraq come January ’07, Michael. But while the history of American warmaking would indicate that proposition to be a pipe dream (and I hate to turn down 2 to 1 odds), I’ll settle for now to let the numbers speak for themselves. So far, it’s WMD – 0, Missions Accomplished – 0.
Michael Herdegen - August 7, 2005 @ 10:58 pm
It would be very startling if the Army didn’t meet at least 50% of its recruitment goals in fiscal ’06.
As shown by my references, in fiscal ’05 the Army will meet at least 80% of their quota, heading into the third year of a war in which one out of every thirty deployed soldiers gets killed or has a limb blown off.
While it’s undoubtedly true that we cannot KNOW the future, what would change, to cause 57,000 fewer people to decide to join the Army in ’06 ?
Further, if during the first half of fiscal ’06, the Army could only get 5,000 recruits, Congress would raise the enlistment bonus to $ 100,000, and the Army would get their 80,000 soldiers.
Finally, considering the length and brutality of the Iraqi conflict, this is really the first true test of the all-volunteer military – and it has been OUTSTANDING.
Unless the U.S. is called upon to take over the rest of the world, I don’t think that we’ll ever see another draft.
lonbud - August 8, 2005 @ 8:28 am
what would change, to cause 57,000 fewer people to decide to join the Army in ‘06 ?
It would be very startling, but, well, maybe people might get a clue?
Congress would raise the enlistment bonus to $ 100,000, and the Army would get their 80,000 soldiers.
Which would be another fine example of our government’s drunken sailor approach to all things military.
this is really the first true test of the all-volunteer military – and it has been OUTSTANDING.
Hmm. Despite a near-total media blackout, there is evidence today of a far greater degree of anti-war sentiment among active and retired military personnel and their families than at a similar stage of just about any conflict I can think of.
An anti-war Iraq veteran came within two percentage points of defeating a shoo-in administration mouthpiece last week in Ohio, in a district where she and her predecessors had been used to carrying elections by 60 and 70 percent of the vote.
And just watch this week as Cindy Sheehan kicks up a little dust in the dog days of August outside Mr. Bush’s Prarie Chapel down in Crawford. He’s holed up with the wagons circled, afraid to face the wrath of a mother scorned, and for good reason.
Harshmoon - August 9, 2005 @ 12:01 am
“An anti-war Iraq veteran came within two percentage points of defeating a shoo-in administration mouthpiece last week in Ohio, in a district where she and her predecessors had been used to carrying elections by 60 and 70 percent of the vote.”
:::
Sorry, usually just read and enjoy. You can not possibly consider that campaign one of Dem can you? Did you see the ads, they were quite conservative.
I wonder what the precentage would have been if campaigned on actual beliefs.
As for the Right, the turnout was low – they simply did not get off their asses to vote.
This is in no way some type of victory, but a rather just another spin.
Ohio means nothing, and surely does not indicate a change from current is coming.
lonbud - August 9, 2005 @ 8:31 am
I am glad to hear you read and enjoy, Harshmoon, but I want to encourage as much commentary and discussion as possible. This blog’s value (and capacity for provoking enjoyment) can only improve by atttracting a diversity of voices.
Statistics are most definitely the building blocks of spin, and it’s only marginally more effective to use them for divining the future than would be, say, the oracle at Delphi or the entrails of sacred cows.
Regardless of the actual meaning of Paul Hackett’s campaign and subsequent defeat in Ohio, the level of skepticism and public opposition to Bush’s adventure in Iraq far outstrips –a little more than two years into it– that seen two years into any major conflict the U.S. has engaged in its brief history.
Unless things on the ground in Iraq take a very dramatic turn for the better, and soon, I believe we’ll begin to see even more pushback against the President. It’s too bad the Democrats seem so bereft of candidates and ideas because next year’s mid-term elections would seem to present them with a grand opportunity to loosen the Republicans’ current hegemony.
Paul Burke - August 10, 2005 @ 6:58 am
New Rant on my web site too long and off topic to post here wasn’t sure how to open up a new discussion – so check out my blog on the energy and transportation bill – hope I’m not breaking protocol Lonbud – forgive me if I am – too important
Ferior - April 14, 2006 @ 8:26 am