By Teresa Neumann

“If numbers can tell a story, then on this sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq they tell a hopeful one.”

(Iraq)—Writing for World Magazine, reporter Mindy Belz gives an assortment of statistics from Iraq since the start of the war to support the case that Iraqis are optimistic about their future.

“If numbers can tell a story,” says Belz, “then on this sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq they tell a hopeful one. But,” she continued, “the sixth in a series of ABC/BBC polls tracking Iraqi opinion has caught even the pollsters off-guard. In releasing their poll results last week pollsters say public attitudes in Iraq reveal ‘a stunning reversal of the spiral of despair caused by Iraq’s sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007.'”

“Tellingly,” she writes, “64 percent of Iraqis now say democracy is the form of government they favor. And overall? Sixty-five percent of Iraqis say things are going well in their own lives, up from 39 percent in 2007,” noting that in contrast, “a recent survey of 25,000 households in New York City found that 51 percent rated their overall quality of life as good or excellent.”