« Mod Your iPhone | Main | Bucks Not Bullets » Hope: The New Plan10 Sep 2007 02:51 pm Check out this briefing slide from General Petraeus' presentation:
Basically, the idea is that about nine months from now, we'll be back to the number of troops we had in Iraq about nine months ago. After that, more stuff is supposed to change . . . maybe . . . sometime . . . if all goes well . . . maybe . . . at some point. Comments (53)
And once more, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. Aren't those stars and the sad little question marks next to them just peachy? I'd like to know which junior-level wingnut prepared that slide. 
Damn, you beat me to it. I might have to break this down with Tufte's pamphlet. There is absolutely no sense of time with that slide and that's not by accident
Nice little political ploy for the 2008 elections. Increase troops during 2007, so you can reduce them in 2008. That way nothing has really changed, but the Republicans can make the claim they are reducing troops and bringing our boys home from Iraq.
Leading? Partnering? Overwatch? WTF?
'Strategic Overwatch?' That's some serious milspeak. Is it the current euphemism for 'occupation?'
I keep reading this chart but for the life of me can't locate Rainbow Brite or the Unicorns of Eternal Happiness. I know they meet somewhere in Anbar Province but Patraeus is being suspiciously vague as to the exact location.
The stars are nice 'n' purdy, but why didn't They use ponies? Could someone please photoshop some ponies on there for us? Thanks in advance.
All that will have been accomplished is that Bush will have bought himself about two years toward his goal of running out the clock on the war.
I might have to break this down with Tufte's pamphlet. There is absolutely no sense of time with that slide and that's not by accident Nice to hear someone cite Edward Tufte. However, there isa sense of time on the graphic. If you'll look closely, you see dates: Sep 07, Dec 07, Mar 08, Jul 08, and then...Mar 08 again? Apparently the withdrawal plan involves reversing the flow of time so the "surge" will run in reverse. Sounds like a good idea to me!
I think it's great that conditions on the ground have improved so much that Petraeus says we can reduce troop numbers at precisely the point when he's previously admitted it would be physically impossible to maintain them. That's some mighty fine generaling.
CNN is reporting this as a proposed withdrawal of something like 50,000 troops, perhaps they've corrected this. The propaganda surge is working!
I am always amazed at how crappy the Pentagon's powerpoint is. It seems to violate all the Human Factors rules on cluttering up the page with meaningless symbols.
The second Mar '08 is saying that the date for the second drawdown will be determined no later than (NLT) March 08, which is interesting, because the first reduced level of troops isn't reached until July '08, which means they're deciding on a future drawdown independent of how things work at the new level. Somehow I don't see the second drawdown deadline being met.
We know the location of the Unicorns of Eternal Happiness (UEHs)--they're in an area north, west and south of Baghdad.
I did a search of 'powerpoint + Iraq' on the .mil server and got 14,400 hits. Here's what NASA had to say about Powerpoint in the wake of the Columbia disaster: "Reliable and credible data must be collected from the programs and projects in order to perform independent and expert technical analyses. In several cases the NESC has found it difficult to collect the data in a reliable and credible format. Lesson(s) Learned: Much of the technical data collected by the NESC typically comes in the form of Power Point charts that attempt to convey the results of an engineering study. Many times the charts are the only documentation of an engineering study or analysis. Technical data in this format can be plagued with problems of misunderstanding, unintentional misrepresentation and inconsistency as was pointed out in the Columbia Accident Investigation Report (Volume 1 Pg.182, para. 7.3 and pg.191), and confirmed by the NESC experience contained in this Lesson Learned. The lack of disciplined, formally documented technical information increases the difficulty of performing an expert independent analysis or evaluation in a timely manner. The data/information can be lost forever if not properly captured at the time of the analysis." It's the frackin' Underpants Gnomes War in Iraq.
So, the vertical axis is troops (in thousands) in the "surge." The horizontal axis is time, with the timespan until the first, 6,000 troop reduction stretching until at least July 2008, ten months from now, and time thereafter indeterminate. This graph would more accurately show the implicit whole situation prognosis if it included in the vertical axis all the troops in Iraq. Including 120,000 more troops would make the vertical axis seven times as high. It would show that the July 2008 reduction is only about a 4% reduction, and that there is no plan to remove 125,000 troops from Iraq.
==Nice to hear someone cite Edward Tufte. However, there isa sense of time on the graphic. If you'll look closely, you see dates: Sep 07, Dec 07, Mar 08, Jul 08 Pedant ;) Maybe the rapture happens in August of 2008? The great thing, if you are Bush, this really does run out the clock. The first draw down has to happen because of the number of available troops. Then we set the date in March to go to the next draw down which isn't identified, but can be assumed to be after November when Bush seems to believe that his successor will continue the plan.
No, I'm wrong, sorry. The vertical axis is apparently "brigades," so this is perhaps the entire force shown.
Putnam- The numbers are brigades, not troop numbers. So the surge was 5 extra brigades, which will be withdrawn by July 2008. The x axis is the one to be worried about since it's unlabeled- the better to hide our plans from the terrorists, my dear!
===Anyway, if you assume a constant scale on the unlabeled X axis, each drawdown period is 6 months, and each adjustment period is 6-9 months. That means we'll still have 1/3 of the current level of troops (=45000) 5 years from the end of '08. Have the 2012 candidates prepared their Iraq positions? Which based on the strategy is pretty optimistic. The lack of any X axis time increments means pretty much that they want you to think this will happen relatively shortly. We might want to get the 2016 & 2020 candidates on record.
I am always amazed at how crappy the Pentagon's powerpoint is. It seems to violate all the Human Factors rules on cluttering up the page with meaningless symbols. Ah, but don't make the mistake of looking at it as something that is intended to convey information. In addition to Tufte, Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit is an essential reference here -- the point of bullshit is to create an impression, regardless of whether it's true or supported by the underlying facts. With its steady march downwards in troop numbers the obvious feature, and question marks and lack of dates only visible on close inspection, this slide accomplishes that in spades.
AP, 9/7/07: "(AP) - The number of U.S. troops in Iraq has climbed to a record high of 168,000 and is moving toward a peak of 172,000 in the coming weeks - a level that could extend into December, a senior military official said Thursday." According to Petraeus's Willy Wonka chart we'll have 166,000 troops in Iraq in March '08. I can't figure it exactly since they are playing some kind of ridiculous game with the Y-axis where the scale isn't consistent. What a bunch of horseshit. Why isn't the scale on the axis consistent except to mislead?
Simple answers to simple questions: Why isn't the scale on the axis consistent except to mislead? To mislead.
Apparently the withdrawal plan involves reversing the flow of time Superman has already been contacted so he can fly around the planet.
Pinson suggests a good question: what does "overwatch" mean? And "partnering" and "leading"? This COULD mean getting a lot of American soldiers out of harm's way. It COULD mean a radical change of mission. What does it mean? Didn't Petraeus define these terms?
if you assume a constant scale on the unlabeled X axis But the x-axis does not have a constant scale. The length taken up on the x-axis from Sep 07 to Dec 07 (3 months) is more than the length taken up on the x-axis from Dec 07 to Jul 08 (7 months). This is impossible for a constant scale.
The stars are nice 'n' purdy, but why didn't They use ponies? Could someone please photoshop some ponies on there for us? Thanks in advance. Done!
Putnam- The numbers are brigades, not troop numbers. On the y-axis? Isn't that troop numbers (x10k)? It doesn't appear to correspond to the brigade numbers in the Happy Pentagon Stars. But as joejoejoe says, it's not to scale, and it's utter bullshit. Could someone ask Tufte to comment on it, just in presentational terms, on his site?
We are in a quaggy infinite look in Iraq and the only way out is to Quit The Program. It can be said that Petraeus, at least, did not redraw the map of Iraq, as some Pentagon generals did for Viet-Nam. BTW, all these generals are sent to Georgetown for one IR MA or another. Does that instruction include lying or is that a pre-requisite for the job?
Hope: The New Plan I don't get the title of the post. Isn't the plan the plan, rather than hope? The chart is about the timing of certain troops reductions. But to say that the timing of the reductions is unspecified right now isn't to say that we have no plan - it is just to say that... the timing of the plan is unspecified.
Royko - You're chart is amazing!
Wow, that whole point flew over Al's head. Isn't it better not to post things saying you're stupid?
Obviously the x-axis is logarithmic scale - logarithm to the base (inifinity-1) of the number of months since last month.
to say that the timing of the reductions is unspecified right now isn't to say that we have no plan - it is just to say that... the timing of the plan is unspecified. The timing of Al's receipt of a motherfucking clue is also unspecified.
Royko, cleek, you guys, for lack of a better word, totally rule.
At least he did not say that in March 2008 he will declare his intention to commision a group of experts to advise him on the date when it will be appropriate to make a plan for the withdrawals.
Of course, a smart politician might take the deception of this figure at it's word and schedule a 75% reduction in force levels over the next 9 months (rather than just a 75% reduction in "surge" levels). They could stamp it the Petraeus plan and then let him come back and explain why what everyone thought he said isn't really what he said.
Oh, it's now apparently an 'illustrative document' cunningly disguised as a chart.
Actually stars are standard NATO terminology for "decision points," the point in time or space where a choice needs to be made. The numbers in the decision point refer to when decisions need to be made about whether to go down to the next step. So for instance Sep 07 is the DP for deciding whether to go from 20 brigades to 15 (y-axis is brigades) between Dec 07 and July 08. The chart is flagging that the decision on the next phase (time indeterminate in this chart) will have to be made no later than (NLT) March 08. The vertical bars give some indication of what it is forecast the troops would be doing during each of the next five post-surge phases of the Iraq occupation. It doesn't say much, true, but I regret to say that I understood what little it was trying to say instantly, because it's in a Western mil-speak lexicon I'm familiar with. I'm a big fan of Tufte, too, but to a military audience this could have been an effective way of conveying the knowns and unknowns in the post-surge strategy, FWIW.
That's the gayest-looking chart I've ever seen. You'd think with all the Powerpoint warriors striding the corridors of the Pentagon, they could have come up with something a little more many-looking.
I'm a big fan of Tufte, too, but to a military audience this could have been an effective way of conveying the knowns and unknowns in the post-surge strategy, FWIW. It's easy to make fun of the graphic--for once, I find myself in complete agreement with Steve Sailer--but I'd imagine that even a military audience, if they had a functioning bullsh*t detector, would pereceive the chart for the complete nonsense it is. There are five gradually shortening bars, broken down by mission--but where are numbers those breakdowns are based on? Why--since none of the forecasting of troop levels in Iraq has been accurate so far--should we believe these predictions anyway? And of the five "decision points," one is the present, one is March 2008, and the other three are...question marks? And if we read the graph literally, it looks like that staring in December there's supposed to be a force reduction of about 15% before the March '08 "decision point--" really? And so on.
I keep reading this chart but for the life of me can't locate Rainbow Brite or the Unicorns of Eternal Happiness. Oh my GOD! ROTFLMAO!! Shrieking, tears running down my face.... (I thought maybe I was the only one who was thinking this stuff when I saw the slides....)
Looks like in the 2012 election Barak Obama, in running against President Giuliani (who defeated Hillary in 2008), can make ending the war and brining the troops home his main issue.
But....the bars....they are.... so colorful....and bright..... THE SURGE MUST BE WORKING! ALL YOU MONOCHROME COMMIES HATE AMERICA
New?
If this stupid thing doesn't establish Petreaus as a lying "political hack", I don't know what does. Face it, folks, this is just bullshit. Oh, wait, no, Elwood Blues once said, "It isn't lying. It's just...bullshit." What Elwood did was "bullshit". THIS is lying. This chart proves one thing clearly: to quote Pig Killer, "There ain't no plan!"
To sum up: ...the x-axis does not have a constant scale. The length taken up on the x-axis from Sep 07 to Dec 07 (3 months) is more than the length taken up on the x-axis from Dec 07 to Jul 08 (7 months). This is impossible for a constant scale. ... The numbers are brigades, not troop numbers. But as joejoejoe says, it's not to scale, and it's utter bullshit. Could someone ask Tufte to comment on it, just in presentational terms, on his site? end summary I did some measurements.
and my favorite comment: They could stamp it the Petraeus plan and then let him come back and explain why what everyone thought he said isn't really what he said. It's a Kennedy-esque master stroke! Accept the proposal they didn't mean to make!
When truth is what you say it is, colorful charts are more important than meaningful ones.
Any graph that starts with vertical axis 5 It's a Bush administration intelligence test: What is next in this sequence? 5, 7, 12, 15, 20, ? Why, "millennium" of course!
This chart reeks of collaboration. And that's putting it nicely. I can see the 3/4" x 1" sticky notes from the various senior staffers that must have been stuck to earlier, less tragic, versions of this chart: "Needs stars - use stars -JB" "Vertical axis too clear -DC" "Obfuscate decision point dates -CR" "Emhasize decision point dates -RG" "More Ponies! -W"
1) Make charts
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Heads in the Sand
The question marks on that page are strangely reminiscent of the business plan from the Underpants Gnomes.
Posted by Spike | September 10, 2007 2:56 PM