Fact-checking Christiane Amanpour

Via the Drudge Report I noticed that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour made the following statement yesterday:

"[Iraq]'s a spiraling security disaster... And by any indication whether you take the number of journalists killed or wounded, whether you take the number of Iraqi soldiers killed and wounded, contractors, people working there, it just gets worse and worse."

I decided to see if she is correct. So I went over to the Brookings Institution site and looked up their monthly publication on Iraq statistics, the latest editition of which just came out yesterday. This is what I found:

IRAQI MILITARY & POLICE KILLED MONTHLY:

Jan. 2005: 109
Feb. 103
Mar. 200
April 199
May 259
June 296
July 304
August 282
Sep. 233
Oct. 215
Nov. 176
Dec. 193
Jan. 2006: 190

Are things getting worse? Depends on where you start looking. Over the past year things have perhaps gotten worse given that a year ago 109 died compared to 190 this month. It should be kept in mind, however, that Jan. 05 was unusually quiet in the wake of that month's election. If one starts counting 6 months ago then plainly the trend is an overall improvement.

I also played with the numbers a little bit. Last year the average monthly death toll was 214. Last month was 190. Make of that what you will, but I have a hard time interpreting it as a deterioration.

Unfortunately there is nothing about the number of Iraqi security personnel wounded. If you look at the stats for U.S. troops, however, you will see that last month saw the lowest number wounded since March 2004.

NON-IRAQI CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS KILLED IN IRAQ

Jan. 2005: 7
Feb. 1
Mar. 7
April 21
May 10
June 6
July 4
August 4
Sep. 14
Oct. 6
Nov. 9
Dec. 9
Jan. 2006: 11

Here she might have a case, but not much of one. A year ago 7 contractors were killed. Now it's up by 4. The average last year was 8 per month. This year it's 11.

I report, you decide.

Update: "Kent" raises a great point in the comments.