Thursday, October 30, 2003
Thursday Morning Surf
Here's a pretty even-handed piece from The Hill in which Republicans actually sound reasonable, and not like zombified Kool-Aid drinkers who'd happily go to hell if Bush led them there. (All except for Trent Lott, whose comments sound disturbingly like "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.")
In the article, Senator Roberts of Kansas criticizes the lack of intelligence information necessary to fight a guerilla war--criticisms echoed in an NPR report this morning, which I will link to later today. The United States has had few intelligence assets on the ground in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War--practically nobody on the inside, doing the hard work of spying, producing the sort of critical, credible information that can be used against an enemy. The NPR report this morning noted that U.S. commanders, hoping to do something to forestall the increasing daily attacks, may be now willing to rely on whatever information they can lay their hands on about the attackers--and to act based on information that's less than credible. It's a grim twist on a theme we've heard before. American policymakers from Dick Cheney on down laid many of their plans for this war based on inside information from Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi--the man who promised our troops would be greeted by rose-petal-throwing Iraqi damsels--which turned out to be, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit. Now, U.S. commanders are forced to try to protect their troops by relying on similar bullshit because it's the only option geniuses like Cheney and Chalabi have left them with.
With the number of U.S. deaths in Iraq since "Mission Accomplished" having passed the number incurred while the mission was being "accomplished," the Guardian reported yesterday on the number of Iraqis killed while the mission was being "accomplished." The estimate: somewhere around 9,200 "combatants" and 3,800 civilians.
This, of course, will not be widely reported in the American media. We don't like to think that our sons and daughters are slaughtering people over there. Which means that our only president will never see it. Of course, as he admitted last week, he doesn't read the papers anyhow, preferring to get his news from briefers like Condoleezza Rice. (As Paul Krugman hilariously observed earlier this week: "Emperor. Clothes.") Yet that doesn't stop him from criticizing the media he claims not to pay attention to. David Corn--a writer always worth reading--examines the conundrum.
I wonder if Bush will watch the Jessica Lynch TV movie this weekend, or her interview with Diane Sawyer in a couple of weeks. Lynch, who either was or was not heroically rescued from Iraqi captivity this spring, is back home in Palestine, West Virginia--where the Iraqi lawyer who is said to have tipped off American soldiers to her location paid a visit this week. Except Jessica was too busy to meet him--and that wasn't the only thing that went wrong on the trip. Marcus Lynch of the Telegraph reports, hilariously.
Here's a pretty even-handed piece from The Hill in which Republicans actually sound reasonable, and not like zombified Kool-Aid drinkers who'd happily go to hell if Bush led them there. (All except for Trent Lott, whose comments sound disturbingly like "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.")
In the article, Senator Roberts of Kansas criticizes the lack of intelligence information necessary to fight a guerilla war--criticisms echoed in an NPR report this morning, which I will link to later today. The United States has had few intelligence assets on the ground in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War--practically nobody on the inside, doing the hard work of spying, producing the sort of critical, credible information that can be used against an enemy. The NPR report this morning noted that U.S. commanders, hoping to do something to forestall the increasing daily attacks, may be now willing to rely on whatever information they can lay their hands on about the attackers--and to act based on information that's less than credible. It's a grim twist on a theme we've heard before. American policymakers from Dick Cheney on down laid many of their plans for this war based on inside information from Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi--the man who promised our troops would be greeted by rose-petal-throwing Iraqi damsels--which turned out to be, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit. Now, U.S. commanders are forced to try to protect their troops by relying on similar bullshit because it's the only option geniuses like Cheney and Chalabi have left them with.
With the number of U.S. deaths in Iraq since "Mission Accomplished" having passed the number incurred while the mission was being "accomplished," the Guardian reported yesterday on the number of Iraqis killed while the mission was being "accomplished." The estimate: somewhere around 9,200 "combatants" and 3,800 civilians.
This, of course, will not be widely reported in the American media. We don't like to think that our sons and daughters are slaughtering people over there. Which means that our only president will never see it. Of course, as he admitted last week, he doesn't read the papers anyhow, preferring to get his news from briefers like Condoleezza Rice. (As Paul Krugman hilariously observed earlier this week: "Emperor. Clothes.") Yet that doesn't stop him from criticizing the media he claims not to pay attention to. David Corn--a writer always worth reading--examines the conundrum.
I wonder if Bush will watch the Jessica Lynch TV movie this weekend, or her interview with Diane Sawyer in a couple of weeks. Lynch, who either was or was not heroically rescued from Iraqi captivity this spring, is back home in Palestine, West Virginia--where the Iraqi lawyer who is said to have tipped off American soldiers to her location paid a visit this week. Except Jessica was too busy to meet him--and that wasn't the only thing that went wrong on the trip. Marcus Lynch of the Telegraph reports, hilariously.
