Various people seem very worried Iraq is falling apart, but these concerns are probably overblown and to some extent their premises are likely baseless.

At least half of Ignatius' piece sounds like typical Iraqi political conspiracies, which as a rule run the gamut from improbably contradictory to downright bizarre. Anonymous sources are extremely unreliable (remember the burning Sunnis story? Jamil Hussein?) Sectarian suspicions are such that half of Sunnis think the Shia are working for Iran, while Shia are happy to claim the same of Sunnis and Syria.

But look at the numbers. At 240, July 2009 had the 4th-fewest deaths since they started keeping track. August will be worse, but still looks to come in well below the average of 494 in 2008. And those numbers are compiled by people who still count the six "burning Sunnis" mentioned parenthetically above in their statistics, because they assume any and all deaths reported by the toddler-aged Iraqi press are accurate (presumably they also would have recorded 10,000 deaths on 9/11 and stacks of raped and cannibalized corpses in the Superdome).

Meanwhile, U.S. deaths last month were a record low of 8. This month so far: 5.

Yes, there are still attacks. Yes, Iraq is still horribly dysfunctional (but far better than under Saddam by virtually every measure, from basic services to average violent deaths to GDP to basic liberties like voting, free press, and free speech). But overall this still looks a whole lot like the victory conventional wisdom in 2006 said was a pipe dream.

So while it's possible Iraq could get a lot worse in the future, nothing has happened so far that should cause anyone to panic. As Michael Totten observes:

The uptick in violence following America's partial withdrawal shouldn't shock anyone. If you scale back security on the streets, more violence and crime are inevitable. The same thing would happen in the United States if local police departments purged the better half of their officers. That does not mean, however, that Iraq is doomed to revert to war.