Take a look at this Foreign Policy chart recently published on the “so called surge” and think about it in terms of the questions I have outlined in boxes.

Whatever one things about the surge and FP’s assessment of it, they can do better than just skewing the chart to make the case.

See: Foreign Policy on “The Failing Surge”.

P.S. If you want to see someone better than me take apart such representations, refer to Edward Tufte’s site (for example, here).

P.S.S. I found this at Andrew Sullivan’s site. He has many many good postings on the Surge and the War.

If you haven’t heard of Edward Tufte or have but haven’t read anything by him, I highly recommend you check out his site: Edward Tufte

The book above, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, will change the way you look at the depiction of information. He has lots of great books, including his new one:

He also writes scathingly on Powerpoint. 🙂 See here. Unfortunately, Powerpoint marches on. Pity.