All major indicators of violence in Iraq have dropped by between 40 and 80 percent since February 2007, when President Bush committed an additional 30,000 troops to the war there, the Pentagon reported Monday.
The quarterly report to Congress noted that the military, political and economic gains made in the five-year-old war remain "fragile, reversible and uneven," and that Islamic jihadists loyal to al Qaeda in Iraq remain capable of high-profile attacks.
But civilian deaths have dropped from a peak of nearly 4,000 a month from December 2006 to January 2007 to about 500 a month as of May, and U.S. troop deaths have dropped from 126 in May 2007 to an all-time low of 19 in May 2008.