Metrics are very hard to get in COIN/stabilization/peacekeeping, particularly leading measures. It's easy to get a metric that will tell you that you were doing really great--or really poorly--six months ago. Short term feedback is much harder.

But I would recommend those who work this should contact the ORSA officers who worked for me in Baghdad--LTC Scott Kain and MAJ Jeremy Newton. Both are incredibly skilled staticians/modelers with a good sensing of the multiplicity of issues involved in doing an credible assessment (and a healthy sense of limitations). While I still believe you have to balance the objective data with subjective assessment (both at a theoretical level of not all is measureable, and at a practical level that we know we don't have the capability to measure as we would like), their model was a good tool--and did pick up the improvements as Baghdad got better.

And I agree--while EBO has obvious shortcomings, we should "harvest" its two primary contributions--non kinetics matter, and assessments matter.

Doug