September 8, 2003

Same planet, different world.

Our noon vigils on the Quad had been somewhat quiet of late. Not today. Maybe it was because of the sock puppet’s speech last night. His supporters seem to be getting uncomfortable.

I was standing alone at on the Quad. One person walking by in the distance with another individual shouted, “Get a job, schmuck.” I looked at him and called out, “How erudite.” He answered, “What?” I repeated, “How erudite.” After a second he replied, “Thank you.” and then continued on. His companion peeled off and approached me. When he noticed what she had done he turned, but hovered in the distance. Was he afraid to talk to me? She wasn’t. She asked me, “What’s this about.” I was holding my “The Constitution is not ‘optional'” sign.” I talked about Article VI in the Constitution [Why is it no one reads the Constitution anymore?], the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, The U.S.A. Patriot Act. We conversed. She stated, “That’s a lot to think about.” I answered, “It doesn’t matter what your view is or what standard you hold someone in public office to, after all we’re all entitled to an opinion, but you must be consistent.”

A short while later another individual walked up and said, “I didn’t know liberals believed in that.” I replied, “That’s a rather broad statement, how do you know if I’m liberal.” “I’ve seen your other signs.” So I spoke about Article VI, treaties, the United Nations Charter, and stare decisis [a legal doctrine – “let the decision stand”] and Ex parte Milligan [a post civil war case which in essence asserts that “the Constitution applies to all people at all times”]. You can see their eyes glaze over. They don’t really know the Constitution and in this case he’s probably never read it. I even offered to read Article VI to him since I keep the entire text with me in my Palm Pilot.

“Well, liberals view the Constitution with more flexibility in interpretation.” I reiterated my “but, you must be consistent” argument. I then added, “In every 14th Amendment case but one Antonin Scalia has asked, ‘who has standing?’ Do you know the one case in which he didn’t? December 12, 2000, Bush v. Gore. Why didn’t he ask the question then? Bush didn’t have standing, only a voter in Florida would have been able to show standing. Scalia was being inconsistent.” “But what about the millions of voters in Florida?” “Then one of them should have filed suit.” They short circuit when you apply the consistency argument.

“Clinton and Gore did nothing. Al Gore wouldn’t have been able to handle September 11th.” I replied, “Look at what the Gore Commission report says about airline security. You can look it up. The airline industry and its republican friends in Congress blocked any action because the industry was saying, ‘It’ll cost too much.'”

We brought up the weapons of mass destruction.  Where are they? Ah, the weapons of mass destruction, that seems to irritate them a bit. I spoke in some detail about the impossibility of hiding the operating gas centrifuges engaged in manufacturing fissile material. The infrastructure is massive. I pointed out that I had bigger worries about the security of weapons grade material in the old Soviet Union, which by the way, the administration cut the security and acquisition budget for before September 11th. The administration wasn’t paying attention.

“Well, what about what happened on September 11th. Shouldn’t Iraq be held responsible? They supported the terrorists.” My colleague replied, “Where did you hear that?” “There are plenty of sources.” “Could you name one?” “They supported terrorism.” “Give me examples.” After some silence, “Just give me one example. We’re here every weekday at noon, just come back and give us an example.”

I asked, “Uh, how many of the September 11th terrorists were from Iraq?” “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?” “You can look it up. How many were from Saudi Arabia?”

So, grasping at straws he says, “Why weren’t you out here when Bill Clinton used force without the UN?” A-ha. It always comes to Bill Clinton with them. He missed the point. They always miss the point.

My colleague pointed out that Clinton’s National Security Adviser told Condoleeza Rice that Al Qaeda was “the one thing you will spend the most time on.”

“When we elect moral leaders we can trust them to make the decisions. We don’t need to know everything. Why weren’t out here criticizing Clinton when he went and used force?” I didn’t bother pointing out that we didn’t elect the current administration in the 2000 election. My colleague replied, “In the Sudan? They had just bombed the Cole. And in Afghanistan they clearly made the connection with an attack on the United States.” “You weren’t out here criticizing Clinton…” He conveniently ignores my earliest point about the United Nations Charter. The use of Force is only allowable if a nation is attacked or if the UN says force is necessary.

They think we’ve been standing out there for months not knowing why we do so. That the brilliance of their am talk radio addled thought processes will overwhelm us and show us the error of our ways.

I’m invariably soft spoken when we have these exchanges. My colleague shows them no mercy. They walk into a buzz saw.

Its ten minutes to the hour. I have to teach. Our inquisitor can’t disengage from my colleague. They walk down the path and I hear, “Why weren’t you out here criticizing Clinton?”

Did I mention? He appeared to be carrying a Bible. God help us all.

McClatchy Newspapers has an online explanation of its Iraq casualties story. The original story was also carried by the Kansas City Star on September 2nd under a different (and misleading) headline in its printed “Kansas City Edition”.

A story by Pentagon Correspondent Nancy A. Youssef that we published on Sunday sparked a huge outcry in the blogosphere this week….

I first wrote about the versions of the article here.

The original McClatchy headline [Combat deaths in Iraq decline; reasons aren’t clear] was correct. The Kansas City Star print edition headline [American casualties plunge in Iraq] was not.

The McClatchy post continues:

…Combat casualties then fell consistently for the next three months, reaching a  low of 56 in August, (filter by August 2007). That’s the lowest number of combat casualties all year. You have to go back to July 2006 to find combat casualties at that level…

The problem in the media is in their loose definition of “casualties” in contrast with “combat deaths”.

The U.S. military defines casualties as such:

…Look at the word “casualty,” for example. Joint Publication 1-02 defines casualty as “any person lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured.” Thus, only those DNBI and battle injury (BI) personnel lost to the organization are casualties. By definition, a person who is treated and immediately returned to duty is not a casualty…

casualty
(DOD) Any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status – whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured. See also casualty category; casualty status; casualty type; duty status – whereabouts unknown; hostile casualty; nonhostile casualty.

To be more precise, the discussion of casualties should include those who are wounded and do not immediately return to duty.

McClatchy Newspapers used the term “combat deaths” in its online headline. The Kansas City Star used the term “casualties” with the agenda indicating modifier “plunge”. There’s a distinct difference.

Note how the McClatchy explanation post does confusingly conflate the terms “casualty” and “combat”, sometimes making the distinction, and sometimes not.

This explains a lot about the last six and a half years.

dubya doesn’t read the memos….

From Juan Cole:

….Bremer shared a letter he sent to then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announcing his intention to disband the army, along with Bush’s reply praising his leadership. Bush’s reply, however, does not prove that he read Bremer’s letter, only that Rumsfeld passed it on to him. You have a sense that Bush gets a lot of memos he doesn’t read, in response to which he pats people on the head and names them Turtle Poo. The real question, on which Bremer has never come clean, is who ordered him to disband the Iraqi army. It wasn’t Bush. Was it Cheney? I guess they don’t bother to tell George everything.

And Condoleeza Rice…

…Q But, Condi, it’s apparently the case that the CIA didn’t even check the documents, didn’t even discover the forgery until after the speech. And now there’s a report that in September of ’02 — if I have this correct — the Post is saying the CIA was encouraging the British to back off of that claim. So I’m trying to understand the sequencing here. Are you saying — so my question is, in hindsight, would you say that the CIA did not properly vet this alleged sale?

DR. RICE: David, this was a complicated matter of a sale. There were other reports, as well, about Saddam Hussein trying to acquire yellow cake. It was not this Niger document alone. There are even other African countries that are cited in the NIE, not just Niger.

We also knew, let’s remember, that this is the context of a nuclear program in which the seeking of yellow cake is only a small piece of the story. It includes training of nuclear scientists; it includes rebuilding certain infrastructure that had been associated with nuclear weapons; it includes a clandestine procurement network. Things that we’re finding out now — for instance, that the scientist buried uranium — I’m sorry, centrifuge pieces in his front yard. So one thing that you have to do is to put this piece about seeking yellow cake in the broader context of what was known to be an active effort by the Iranians to try and reconstitute their program.

But let me just go to the point you made, David. The CIA — I’ve read the reports that you’ve also read, that there were — the British were told they shouldn’t put this in the paper. I’ve read those reports. All that I can tell you is that if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence in the NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the President. The only thing that was there in the NIE was a kind of a standard INR footnote, which is kind of 59 pages away from the bulk of the NIE. That’s the only thing that’s there. And you have footnotes all the time in CIA — I mean, in NIEs. So if there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the President was unaware of that concern and as was I…

….In the White House briefing room on July 18, a senior administration official, speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said Rice did not read October’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the definitive prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons programs by U.S. intelligence agencies. “We have experts who work for the national security adviser who would know this information,” the official said when asked if Rice had read the NIE. Referring to an annex raising doubts about Iraq’s nuclear program, the official said Bush and Rice “did not read footnotes in a 90-page document. . . . The national security adviser has people that do that.” The annex was boxed and in regular type….

…doesn’t read the footnotes.

I get it now.

Nancy A. Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers has an article on American military casualties in Iraq on the front page of today’s Kansas City Star. The Star headline (front page, above the fold) in this morning’s  printed “Kansas City Edition”?

American casualties plunge in Iraq

[This headline is not available on the Star web site.]

The headline on McClatchy Newspapers national website?

Combat deaths in Iraq decline; reasons aren’t clear

Juan Cole observes:

…journalists are still falling for the false Bush administration story that the death toll for US troops has fallen this summer because of the surge. First of all, the death toll has always fallen in the summer because it is hot as hell in Iraq then. Second, the death toll is way more than previous summers, and the total number of US dead this year is much greater than for the same period in 2006…

Larry Johnson, via Juan Cole, writes:

…Compare the current number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq with previous eight month periods for 2006 and 2005. For the first eight months of 2007 there have been 735 American troops killed and 4430 wounded. This is significantly higher than the casualty rate in 2005 or 2006. We have 1000 more dead and wounded this year than last year for the period January-August….

….fewer deaths [of Iraqi civilians] in certain neighborhoods has an alternative and darker explanation. Violence is down because there are fewer people. The absence of respiration is not a sign of life….

Look at the actual numbers – either at the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count or at USWarWatch. From February 1, 2007 (the start of the surge) to today the average daily number of coalition military fatalities in Iraq has been 3.27. For the 1626 days of the war the average daily number of coalition military fatalities in Iraq has been 2.48. In the 412 days preceding the “surge” the average daily number of coalition military fatalities in Iraq was 2.39. You tell me, is that a “plunge” (in the headline words of the Star)?

In August 2003 there were 35 American fatalities for a total of 43 coalition fatalities. In August 2004 there were 66 American fatalities for a total of 75 coalition fatalities. In August 2005 there were 85 American fatalities for a total of 85 coalition fatalities. In August 2006 there were 65 American fatalities for a total of 66 coalition fatalities. In August 2007 there were 81 American fatalities for a total of 85 coalition fatalities. You tell me, is that a “plunge” (in the headline words of the Star)?

Has there been a decline over the last few months?  There was an increase in American and coalition fatalities in April, May and June (with a horrific peak in May), but the levels in July and August are the same, if not higher than in previous years. You tell me, is that a “plunge” (in the headline words of the Star)?

Is serial dubya administration apologist and cheerleader E. Thomas McClanahan of the Kansas City Star now extending his op-ed schtick into being a headline writer?

The only way to make today’s Kansas City Star headline true is to bring our troops home now.

In the music business some of us speak of the genius musicians who pop up so infrequently and astound us with their effortless virtuosity.

There is one such person in the world of comments and snark on progressive political blogs.

We are not worthy.

via the left coaster, Charles Pierce in the comments at Altercation:

….You can’t have missed the fact that the president this week gave the dumbest speech in the history of that office. You would not think you could stuff that much stupid into a single human being, but they managed to do it. Turns out, Iraq is Vietnam after all, if it’s not Korea, and it’s still World War II, unless it turns out to be World War IV….

….For the people who write our politics, presidents don’t fail. They simply succeed less than some of their successors. Watch this happen. Tell me I’m wrong. Just the other day, Justice Stephen Breyer popped onto our local NPR station to talk about the anniversary of the Dred Scott decision, saying he thought it was the most destructive decision in the history of the country.

Guess again, Steve.

Go. Read the whole thing.

ProVote is sponsoring an Iraq War Forum at the Roger Wilson Boone County Government Center, Commission Chambers, in Columbia on August 29th 7:00PM.
Despite being offered the option of choosing his own date and time, Rep. Hulshof’s office says that he is so otherwise booked that he cannot attend such a meeting.
We have heard that a staff member stated: “If Rep. Hulshof wants to have a Town Hall meeting on this subject (Iraq), we will not be partnering with ProVote.”
ProVote, I believe, would be happy to have any meeting by Hulshof on Iraq. When was the last time anyone in the 9th Congressional District saw Kenny Hulshof at any Town Hall meeting? He is our Representative and this is a matter of great importance.
Call Kenny’s office (573 449 5111) to encourage the Congressman to be there on the 29th or hold a Town Hall meeting of his own.

( – promoted by hotflash)

Jon Stewart interviewed Stephen Hayes, a Cheney sycophant who’s written a book about his idol.  Stewart compared the video of Cheney speaking against the invasion of Baghdad in 1994 to Cheney’s Pollyanna predictions before the 2003 invasion.  Hayes gamely defended his man, but it was no contest.  Take a look.

What particularly struck me about Stewart’s critique–aside from his unerring, simple logic–is his civility.  He was patient and pleasant (we could take lessons from him), but unrelenting.

MoveOn sent out this video of Cheney advising us to stay out of Iraq:

( – promoted by hotflash)

Those Iraqis are an uppity lot.  And ungrateful.  They act as if we went there to steal their oil.
 

They’ve always thought it was about the oil, and now they have the gall to consider telling us that we can’t just take it.  We told them a million times that we just want to offer them democracy, so why do they have to be so snotty and suspicious?
Here’s how it was supposed to go.  We were going to put a bunch more troops in there to control those Democracy-hating Sunnis.  After all, you can’t start boosting their oil in any quantities until the natives are subdued sign oil contracts in a violent environment.

Then the democratic government was supposed to pass oil laws that gave American oil companies ironclad control of all future oil reserves (somewhere between 100 billion and 200 billion barrels) for the next thirty years.  We get much needed oil, and the Iraqis get to sell it to us.  Win/win, right?

Those oil laws were supposed to be passed before the Iraqi parliament broke for its August recess.  In fact, we had the laws all written for them.  How much easier could we make it?  There was even–well, sort of–a provision for how they would share the income from the oil sales.  It was vague, admittedly.  Okay, it only said that a federal revenue sharing law would be created one of these days.  But the other 42 provisions in the oil laws were specific.  They spelled out who would get the oil leases and under what conditions.

But now the Iraqis are complaining that no other country signs away its oil leases like that. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia impose safeguards for the national interest when they sign oil contracts–provisions such as limiting the amount of profit the oil companies may make and limiting the number of foreign oil companies in their country.

The longer the Iraqi government goes without passing these laws, the more the opposition to them is growing.  You’d think we were out to cheat them or something.  And besides, they ought to keep in mind that if they don’t pass these oil laws, we won’t give them money for reconstructing all the stuff that got blown up in our quest to give them democracy.  And, as Britain’s new PM, Gordon Brown, pointed out (the Brits are always cooperative and sensible), he supports the IMF line that the debts  incurred under Saddam will not be forgiven until Iraq has a law that permits foreigners to invest in its oil industry.


Come o-o-on, folks.  Be sensible.  We need that oil.