Professor Cole Sums Up the Iraqi Disaster

Juan Cole takes time today to review the results so far in human costs to the Iraqis. Just read this and think about it. One clear point is that this is so disastrous that we, as Americans responsible for the debacle, simply cannot face up to the consequences of our actions. We protect ourselves from being accountable. This is an all-to-human, self-justifying response; not right or responsible, just human.

By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters....

In these situations, typically 3 persons are wounded for every one killed. In Iraq, I suspect it is higher, because US bombings and guerrilla bombings are such a big part of the violence. But let us be conservative.

That would mean 3 million Iraqi wounded in the past five years....
As for the displaced (i.e. homeless), they amount to a startling 5 million persons. There were 1.8 million internally displaced in January of 2007, and by December it had risen to 2.4 million. There are 2.3 million externally displaced, 2 million of them in Jordan and Syria.

In fact 5 million displaced persons is almost the entire population of nearby countries such as Jordan or Israel! 5 million is about the number of Jews in Israel, for instance. In absolute numbers, that is how many Iraqis are living in some other country or some other province, having lost their homes.

Some 1.4 million Iraqis are stuck in Syria, many becoming increasingly penniless. Another 500,000 to 800,000 have been displaced to Jordan, which has now closed its borders to them. Please read this excellent piece of reporting, which points out that the US has done diddly squat for these millions of people upon whom it has visited a world class catastrophe, neither allotting meaningful amounts of aid nor admitting more than a token number as immigrants. Sweden has admitted 40,000 Iraqis, nearly 4 times what the US even plans to. Please write the Senate and the Congress and demand that something be done for these, our victims.

40% of Iraq's middle class is outside the country.

Freedom.

McCain Imploding?

This was recorded in 2005. Since then, McCain has voted with Bush over 90% of the time and has, as documented before, flipped on many issues to align even more perfectly with the Bushwacks.
He cannot possibly win unless there is a truly an over-the-top, wag-the-dog event. We may be in the beginning of a real collapse for McCain.

Keep an Eye on This One

The Carpetbagger makes a good point here. The press is starting to make a point about how similar McCain and Obama are on issues. Except, these articles from Bloomberg and the LAT downplay many of the issues where there are significant differences and simply err on many of those cited as being similar. The purpose of doing this: see, McCain is just as much for change. Presto, he really is different than Bush! Also, bullpucky.

Another Well-Placed Nail in the MSM Coffin

This is just too good to not post. Read it all. The Scott McClellan book makes two major points, neither one of which is new: the Bushies lied us into the war and the MSM played along, mostly passively and sometimes actively. But the excuse of both camps has been: we could only state what we all knew at the time. The Knight-Ridder, later McClatchy, reporters, however, were pretty much correct in their scepticism all along as documented in the link. The correct information was there from the beginning if you opened your eyes and cleared your ears. Disgusting.

Glenzilla Strikes Again and the MSM Goes down

Glenn Greenwald is the most withering and comprehensive blogger I read. He assembles an avalanche of historical video and documents to make his points like nobody else. It is like footnotes on steroids in this the era of the internets, The Google, and Nexus/Lexus. In his legally trained hands, it's a powerful and particularly persuasive method that must take him hours each day.

Here he takes on the self-justifying reaction of the biggest of the media's talking heads to Scott McClellan's digs at the compliant and complicit mainstream press during the run-up to the war.

Yesterday was actually quite an extraordinary day in our political culture because Scott McClellan's revelations forced the establishment media to defend themselves against long-standing accusations of their corruption and annexation by the government -- criticisms which, until yesterday, they literally just ignored, blacked-out, and suppressed. Bizarrely enough, it took a "tell-all" Washington book from Scott McClellan, of all people, to force these issues out into the open, and he seems -- unwittingly or otherwise -- to have opened a huge flood gate that has long been held tightly shut.

Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan's claims. One media star after the next -- Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer -- materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are "deferential, complicit enablers" in government propaganda.

I have little doubt that they would be telling the truth if they denied what Yellin reported last night. People like Williams, Gibson and Gregory don't need to be told to refrain from reporting critically about the war and the White House because challenging Government claims isn't what they do. And amazingly, they admitted that explicitly yesterday. Gibson and Gregory both invoked the cliched excuse of the low-level bureaucrat using almost identical language: exposing government lies "is not our job."

Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and company are paid to play the role of TV reporters but, in reality, are mere television emcees -- far more akin to circus ringleaders than journalists. It's just as simple as that. David Halberstam pointed that out some time ago. Unlike Yellin, Donahue and Banfield, nobody needed to pressure the likes of Williams, Gibson and Russert to serve as propaganda handmaidens for the White House. It's what they do quite eagerly on their own, which is precisely why they're in the corporate positions they're in. They are smooth, undisruptive personalities who don't create problems for their executives. Watching them finally describe how they perceive of "their role" leaves no doubt about any of that.

Baghdad Hillary

Hillary lost me a while ago when she started adopting the actions I've abhorred from the Repubs: endless spin and manipulation, selective memory, dishonest argument, and continual moving of the goalposts. For many months I had been agnostic on Hillary vs. Obama. Her irrationality and dishonesty now threatens the run against McCain (I still think Barack is going to win comfortably), but it also tarnishes the Democratic brand as the clear-thinking, honest party. I'm not the only one. Yukkk.

Huff Post:

"Every time she claims she has a popular majority, she's shattering whatever ceasefire exists and making it that much more likely that her supporters stay home come November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the media and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable."

Bittman Aligns with Michael Pollen

This video of a lecture by Mark Bittman, food columnist for the NYT and TV food guy on PBS, makes most of the key points made by Pollen in his book In Defense of Food. Watch it and read the very short and prescriptive book. I like to think it's changing the way we eat. I hope so, but 60 years of mostly bad habits are hard to break. The politics of this is that we are in the grips of agribusiness, to the detriment of our health and environment.