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"Iraq War"
It’s funny ’cause it’s true. In a “laugh so you don’t cry” kind of way, of course.
(The answer to the title questions is, of course, “no”.)
Full Story... →Paul Krugman:
To understand what?s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.
Synopsis: American business Hunt Oil Company, headed by a man who is a close Bush ally and member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He is presumably well-informed on the situation in Iraq. And Hunt Oil has expressly gone against the wishes of our government by entering into an oil deal with the Kurds, rather than with the central Iraqi government. They are essentially betting on the central government failing. And as right-wingers always say, the market is never [...]
Full Story... →Thank Poku for Jon Stewart. Hilarious (and informative for our pro-war readers).
Bonus John Hodgman hilarity after the jump. It’s worth it.
Full Story... →Yesterday I did a little number crunching. This morning, I decided to chart some of those numbers to make it easier to see trends. The first thing to note is that I did replace one data value – April 2004′s number of 126 deaths – with the grand mean of 54.15789. While it wasn’t technically an outlier, it was awfully close, and it obfuscated some of the trends on the chart.
So, lets look at the graph that “pro-surge” people are going to take the most comfort from. This is a chart of troop deaths vs month, with a [...]
Full Story... →I’ve mostly found the numerical alchemy by the right amusing, however something over at BrainShavings was too egregious to go unmentioned.
Benjamin Disraeli is reputed to have said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” A prescient man, that Ben.
Boy, you got that right. It seems The Puddle Pirate takes exception with comparing this years troop fatality figures with last years figures month-by-month, and proceeds to “demonstrate” that this is cherry picking the figures since he could just pick the highest death totals from each corresponding month over the duration of the war to [...]
Full Story... →Big surprise, right? Boehner on the surge in January:
I think it will be rather clear in the next 60 to 90 days as to whether this plan is going to work. And, again, that?s why we need to have close oversight, so that we just don?t look up 60 or 90 days from now and realize that ? that this plan is not working. We need to know, as we ? as we?re ? we move through these benchmarks, that the Iraqis are doing what they have to do.
Boehner on the surge yesterday:
The GAO report really amounts [...]
Full Story... →I watched the documentary The War Tapes over my break. Tremendous. Shot entirely by soldiers in-theater, with their own commentary. I especially like the liberal guy who immigrated from Lebanon as a kid, Zack Bazzi. He was snarky, funny, and aware of what was going on.
I highly recommend watching this. More clips after the jump.
Full Story... →The threat posed by terrorists is so unprecedented, that we must resort to torture (except not call it that) in order to win, right?
Wrong.
In this new kind of war, we must be willing to question the enemy when we pick them up on the battlefield. (Applause.) We have captured people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who our intelligence community thinks was the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks. When we captured him, I said to the Central Intelligence Agency, why don’t we find out what he knows in order to be able [...]
Full Story... →That’s how Ari “Mouth of Sauron” Fleischer’s new organization – Freedom’s Watch – answers their phones. They are encouraging people to call their Congressman – by calling Freedom’s Watch. If you support the war, they connect you thru to Congress, as documented in this video from Americans United for Change.
You can see Freedom’s Watch videos at their site. You can reach Congress directly by calling (202) 224-3121.
Full Story... →First it’s comedic genius Alec Baldwin’s ugly divorce proceedings (and it’s ugly fallout with his daughter), now it’s Born-Again Stephen “BioDome” Baldwin’s unfortunate involvement in turning the Iraq War into millennialist proselytizing.
Baldwin became a right-wing, born-again Christian after the 9/11 attacks, and now is the star of Operation Straight Up (OSU), an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among active-duty members of the US military. As an official arm of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, OSU plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU [...]
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George Will: the surge has failed
George Will in yesterday’s WaPo (emphasis mine):
Those who today stridently insist that the surge has succeeded also say they are especially supportive of the president, Petraeus and the military generally. But at the beginning of the surge, both Petraeus and the president defined success in a way that took the achievement of success out of America’s hands.
The purpose of the surge, they said, is to buy time — “breathing space,” the president says — for Iraqi political reconciliation. Because progress toward that has been negligible, there is no satisfactory answer to this question: What is the U.S. [...]
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