Just as congressional gamesmanship over Iraq last week hit its apex, The Brookings Institution updated its Iraq Index, one of the most revealing catalogs of the war’s results. Among its most striking accounts is the progress being made in recruiting Iraqi security forces – they have nearly reached the goal set by the United States – and the unabated instances of insurgent attacks. If this is standing up, U.S. troops are not near ready to stand down.

Even with upward revisions for the expected number of police, national guard and armed forces Iraq would need, security forces there are close to meeting their recruitment targets. According to the State Department’s Iraq Weekly Status Report, Iraq’s security forces now have 265,600 of 272,566 that they were expected to need. There remain questions about their readiness, but in May, the Defense Department’s report to Congress, “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” concluded the Iraqi Army, support forces and special operations forces reached 86 percent of authorized force strength; the Ministry of the Interior had trained and equipped 77 percent of its needed forces.

Combined, the report states defense and interior “are on track to complete initial training and equipping of 100 percent of their authorized end-strength by the end of December 2006…”

This would be very good news and an indication of an approaching time of withdrawal for coalition troops if Iraq seemed more secure as a result of the addition of these Iraqi security forces, but the Brookings numbers don’t suggest that. Iraq, for instance, suffers about 70 car bombs a month, a number unchanged for more than a year. The number of Iraqi military and police killed was down in May to 149 for that month but through the spring has run steadily between 160 and 200 a month. The number of Iraqi civilians killed monthly rose through the spring, and by May was between 755 and 1,321 – a wide disparity reflecting different reports but both the high and low estimates were up from earlier months this year. Worse, a Brookings category called “multiple fatality bombings” is showing a steady march upward, to a high of 56 last month.

This increase in the number of attacks is consistent with the estimated number of insurgents, which has risen over the months from 5,000 to 15,000 to now simply “20,000-plus,” which is to say their numbers are apparently undiminished, whatever they actually are. The estimated number of foreign fighters in the insurgency remains consistently less than 10 percent of the total.

Two conclusions about these numbers are that Iraq is finding some success in rebuilding its security forces, with the aid if the United States; but rebuilt forces don’t immediately lead to a diminished number of attacks by the insurgency. Even as the security forces approach full strength, U.S. troops have a long stretch of fighting and training ahead of them.