Military Chart Showing Iraq's Slide to "Chaos"

A classified October 18th briefing by the military on Iraq reportedly included a chart which shows Iraq steadily progressing from the ideal of "peace" on the far left, to dangerously close to the red "chaos" on the far right of the chart. The New York Times reports that

for a military culture that thrives on PowerPoint briefings, the shifting index was seen by some officials as a stark warning about the difficult course of events in Iraq, and mirrored growing concern by some military officers.

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This story comes on the heels of an Economist report on the changing mood among military families and new soldiers in basic training titled "The Silent Majority". From the Report:

Unhappiness with the war is growing within the military community

ON ANY Saturday San Antonio's colorful, lazy downtown is full of airmen. After graduating from basic training at nearby Lackland air-force base on Friday morning, they get a town pass. Last weekend the mood was quiet. Some airmen, Mum and Dad in tow, went for a ride on putt-putt boats. Others poked around the Alamo. One spent several minutes looking at a duck...

You can forgive the airmen for being subdued. As many potential soldiers have noticed, this is a difficult time to join up. The army has managed to scrape up slightly more than 80,000 recruits this year, but only by lowering its qualification standards and offering large enlistment bonuses...

"For military families, and especially young service members, there's a lot of frustration about how long and how difficult this war has been,” says Jim Martin, a retired army colonel at Bryn Mawr College. But the magnitude of that frustration is hard to measure...

People who study the armed forces, including Mr Kohn and Mr Martin, agree that officers support the Republicans by a big margin. But having questioned many, Mr Kohn has found that their conservatism has its limits. Enlisted men and women still lean towards the Republican Party too, but not as heavily as they once did. George Marshall, the army's chief of staff during the second world war, once famously argued that soldiers should not vote because it might compromise their ability to serve. There may yet come a day when some Republican strategists are tempted to make that same argument...