If you've not yet bookmarked In From the Cold, take a moment to do so. 'Former Spook' often has excellent insights on intelligence and national security issues.

Today he looks at the data for U.S. casualties in Iraq in August. He looks both at what the media are likely to claim, and what the reality is. As with so much of Iraq reporting, the two are very different:

Using data from the icasualties web site, we determined that 54 U.S. military personnel were killed in combat in Iraq during August. The other 25 died mostly in accidents, including two helicopter crashes that claimed a total of 19 American lives. The continued drop in combat deaths follows a trend that's become increasingly evident, as detailed by this monthly breakdown, which includes the number of hostile fire and non-combat deaths:

In other words, Americans combat deaths in Iraq has dropped by almost 50% over the past three months--while the number of troops in harm's way has increased (the surge hit its peak less than two weeks ago), with a corresponding spike in our operational tempo. We mourn for all of our fallen heroes, but the significant drop in casualties--during a period of greatly expanded operations--offers clear proof that the surge is working, and that their sacrifice was not in vain.

Source: iCasualties.