Times Online: Bush tries to impose new terms of victory

[grytpype]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2413011,00.html

The Times October 20, 2006

Bush tries to impose new terms of victory
From James Hider in Baghdad

A FRESH attempt by President Bush to redefine success in Iraq was undermined within hours by the American military and Iraqi officials.

Mr Bush surprised America by admitting yesterday to growing similarities between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam. But he also emphasised that success should not be measured by the body count, but in terms of the ability of Iraqis to defend themselves, their access to healthcare and education.

“I define success or failure as whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves. I define success or failure as whether schools are being built or hospitals are being opened. I define success or failure as whether we’re seeing a democracy grow in the heart of the Middle East,” he told ABC News.

Only hours after his statement Major-General William Caldwell, spokesman for the US forces in Iraq, said that the results of a vast security operation to secure Baghdad — the key to this war — had been “disheartening”.

And there is little more heartening news from the results of the $30 billion (£16 billion) to $40 billion American reconstruction effort. Since the invasion not a single Iraqi hospital has been built, according to Amar al-Saffar, in charge of construction at the Health Ministry.

...

Another senior Health Ministry official was surprised that Mr Bush had latched on to healthcare as proof of progress in Iraq. “It is the worst situation that the Ministry of Health has been in in its entire history,” he said. Healthcare had become so dire that half of those who died of injuries from terrorist attacks might have been saved, according to Bassim al-Sheibani, of the Diwaniyah College of Medicine, writing in the British Medical Journal.

...

Unbelievable, horrific details in the article.

[aquart]

1. And we know the schools have closed as teachers and pupils flee.

So it doesn't matter a good goddamn if we build them or not.

[humbled_opinion]

31. and matters less to these ass hats if we rebuild them in the Big Easy. nt

[MidwestTransplant]

2. But what abou the good things....like the hospitals being built.

Oh yeah never mind.

[Kablooie]

3. Oh, this article is just partisan politics.

Don't read things like this. Just listen to the president and ignore everything else in the world. Thats the only way you will get non partisan information.


(hope you can read the bitter sarcasm I so cleverly infused into this posting)

[daleo]

4. Hospitals? Health care? Education?

I gather Saddam was actually pretty good at all that.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

46. Don't know about that.

What I do know is that Chimp absolutely sucks at them.

[primavera]

48. Yeah, wouldn't it be great if we could have those things here?

How ironic that we and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dying ostensibly to achieve access to things that we can't even provide for our own population.

[bemildred]

5. That headline borders on illiteracy.

Which is no big deal in TimesOnLine, it is true.

[Kagemusha]

6. Maliki's office is now saying, health ministry = Sadr, ignore them

That the health ministry's skewing the daily body count, making things sound worse, and in general is trying to badmouth the entire government to score cheap political points.

Obviously they're learning how to sound just like the Bush Administration in that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2571365

[samsingh]

7. he's imposed new rules on the Presidency

get less votes and win.

[uppityperson]

8. Lets see if I can get the progression of "sucess" right

1) WMDs and smoking mushroom cloud over a USA city (which we needed to prevent)
2) Saddam was a bad man who oppressed Iraqis (so needed deposing)
3) Iraqis need Democracy and free elections (we need to help them)
4) Iraqis need to be able to defend themselves and educate themselves, with access to healthcare (which they have never had and especially don't have since we invaded for the other reasons above)

Can I get a star on my "learning is fun" chart now?

[gratuitous]

22. "We found this spoon, sir"

Good work, sergeant. We'll be back . . . Weirdo.

[yellowcanine]

25. Alternate headline: "Bush sets the pie lower in Iraq"

Or: "Baking a pie in Iraq without a recipe, flour, water, or an oven."

[Blackthorn]

36. Kinda like making a pie by throwing all the ingedients at a wall. n/t

[wellst0nev0ter]

9. Perhaps It's Just As Well The Hospitals Weren't Built

CBS: Death Squads In Iraqi Hospitals

BAGHDAD, Oct. 4, 2006


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(CBS) An assembly line of rotting corpses lined up for burial at Sandy Desert Cemetery is what civil war in Iraq looks like close up.

The bodies are only a fraction of the unidentified bodies sent from Baghdad every few days for mass burial in the southern Shiite city of Kerbala, CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports.

They come from the main morgue that's overflowing, relatives too terrified to claim their dead because most are from Iraq's Sunni minority, murdered by Shiite death squads.

And the morgue itself is believed to be controlled by the same Shiite militia blamed for many of the killings: the Mahdi Army, founded and led by anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The takeover began after the last election in December when Sadr's political faction was given control of the Ministry of Health. The U.S. military has documented how Sadr's Mahdi Army has turned morgues and hospitals into places where death squads operate freely.



The chilling details are spelled out in an intelligence report seen by CBS News. Among some of the details of the report are:

· Hospitals have become command and control centers for the Mahdi Army militia.

· Sunni patients are being murdered; some are dragged from their beds.

· The militia is keeping hostages inside some hospitals, where they are tortured and executed.

· They're using ambulances to transport hostages and illegal weapons, and even to help their fighters escape from U.S. forces.

MORE. . .

[OneBlueSky]

10. COUNTING COSTS . . .

$30-40bn spent on reconstruction

None Hospitals built since invasion

200 Doctors and pharmacists murdered

15,000 Doctors who have fled abroad

3,000 out of 18,000 schools refurbished

5,000 Extra schools needed

24,000 Pupils who have fled abroad

72 Iraqi civilian fatalities reported yesterday


US casualties

2,784 killed

71 this month

Iraqi police casualties

4,000 killed

8,000 wounded in the past two years

3,000 Iraqi policemen sacked this month

unbelievable . . .

[struggle4progress]

11. Fallujah Doctors Report U.S. Forces Obstructed Medical Care in April (04)

Dahr Jamail
Fri 21 May 2004

Fallujah, Iraq , May 21 - Doctors from the General Hospital of Fallujah, as well as others involved with clinics throughout the city, are reporting that US Marines obstructed their services during the fighting that engulfed this city in April. They also said US snipers intentionally targeted their clinics and ambulances in the city during the siege.

"The Marines have said they didn't close the hospital, but essentially they did," said Dr. Abdul Jabbar, an orthopedic surgeon at the General Hospital. "They closed the bridge which connects us to the city, closed our road, and the area in front of our hospital was full of their soldiers and vehicles."

Major T.V. Johnson, public affairs officer for the 1st Marine Division, said the effective sealing off of the hospital from the city was an essential part of his unit's strategy, and pointed out that the bridge leading to it was reopened on April 17, two weeks into the intense fighting ...

http://www.health-now.org/site/article.php?menuId=14&articleId=243


Last Updated: Saturday, 6 November, 2004, 13:14 GMT
US strikes raze Falluja hospital
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/40496000/jpg/_40496809_hospital203bgrab.jpg

A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids in the Iraqi city of Falluja.
Witnesses said only the facade remained of the small Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city. There are no reports on casualties.

A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault.

UN chief Kofi Annan has warned against an attack on the restive Sunni city ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3988433.stm


comment | posted November 24, 2004 (December 13, 2004 issue)
Falluja's Health Damage
Miles Schuman

While the North American news media have focused on the military triumph of US Marines in Falluja, little attention has been paid to reports that US armed forces killed scores of patients in an attack on a Falluja health center and have deprived civilians of medical care, food and water ...

Dr. al-Jumaili reports that thirty-five patients were killed in the airstrike, including two girls and three boys under the age of 10. In addition, he said, fifteen medics, four nurses and five health support staff were killed, among them health aides Sami Omar and Omar Mahmoud, nurses Ali Amini and Omar Ahmed, and physicians Muhammad Abbas, Hamid Rabia, Saluan al-Kubaissy and Mustafa Sheriff ...

US airstrikes also leveled a warehouse in which medical supplies were stored next to the health center, Dr. al-Jumaili reports. Ambulances from the city had been confiscated by the government, he says, and the only vehicle left was targeted by US fire, killing the driver and wounding a paramedic. Hamid Salaman of the Falluja General Hospital told the Associated Press that five patients in the ambulance were killed.

US and allied Iraqi military forces stormed the Falluja General Hospital, which is on the perimeter of the city, at the beginning of the assault, claiming it was under insurgent control and was a center of propaganda about civilian casualties during last April's attack on the city. The soldiers encountered no resistance. Dr. Rafe Chiad, the hospital's director, reached by phone, stated emphatically that it is a neutral institution, providing humanitarian aid. According to Dr. Chiad, the US military has prevented hospital physicians, including a team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, internists and general practitioners, from entering Falluja. US authorities have denied all requests to send doctors, ambulances, medical equipment and supplies from the hospital into the city to tend to the wounded, he said. Now the city's only health facility is a small Iraqi military clinic, which is inaccessible to most of the city's remaining population because of its distance from many neighborhoods and the dangers posed by US snipers and crossfire ...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041213/schuman


Rebuilding? Not for Fallujah
By Dahr Jamail and Ali Fadhil
Inter Press Service
June 25, 2006

One and a half years after the November 2004 U.S. military assault on Fallujah, residents tell of ongoing suffering, lack of jobs, little reconstruction and continuing violence. The US military launched Operation Phantom Fury against the city of Fallujah-destroying an estimated 70 percent of the buildings, homes and shops, and killing between 4,000 and 6,000 people, according to the Fallujah-based non-governmental organization the Study Center for Human Rights and Democracy (SCHRD).

IPS found that the city remains under draconian biometric security, with retina scans, fingerprinting and X-raying required for anyone entering the city. Fallujah remains an island: not even the residents of the surrounding towns and villages like Karma, Habbaniya, Khalidiya, which fall under Fallujah's administrative jurisdiction, are allowed in. Security badges are required for anyone wishing to enter the city. To obtain a badge, one has to be a Fallujah native from a certain class. That is, if one is from Fallujah and a government official, a high-class badge of grade G will be issued. Journalists with an X-grade badge will be allowed. Then there are B for businessmen and C for those who have contracts with US military in the city. Last are the R-grade badges, which will not be admitted through the main checkpoint at the west side of the city, and must seek entrance through "second class" checkpoints elsewhere ...

Across the Euphrates River from the city sits Fallujah General Hospital. Built in 1964, the hospital was unable to function during either US siege because it was being occupied by the US military. Doctors were reluctant to talk to IPS unless promised anonymity. "It is more a barn than a hospital and we are not honored to work in it," said one doctor. "There is a horrible lack of medical supplies and equipment, and the Ministry of Health is not doing much about it," added another doctor, also speaking on condition of anonymity. When IPS mentioned a new hospital under construction in the city, one of the doctors replied, with irony, that half of the people of Fallujah would be dead before that hospital project was completed. He said an emergency plan for the existing hospital is essential, especially because people are too afraid of seeking medical attention in any of the Baghdad hospitals for fear of being kidnapped and killed by death squads. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Ramadi General Hospital, often used by residents of Fallujah, is no longer accessible due to the ongoing US military siege of that city. During the interview of the doctors, patients and their companions gathered around and started complaining about "the lack of everything" in the hospital ....

And while the residents continue to wait for the promised compensation funds, of the 81 reconstruction projects slated for the city, less than 30 have been completed and many others will most likely be canceled due to lack of funding, according to a Fallujah council member who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity. Current estimates of the amount needed to rebuild Iraq are between 70 and 100 billion dollars. Only 33 percent of the 21 billion dollars originally allocated by the United States for reconstruction remains to be spent. According to a report by the US inspector general for reconstruction in Iraq, officials were unable to say how many planned projects they would complete, nor was there a clear source for the hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to maintain the projects that had been completed. As for Fallujah in particular, security has eaten up as much as 25 percent of reconstruction funding, but even more has reportedly been siphoned off by corruption and overcharging by contractors. Last year, a US congressional inspection team was set up to monitor reconstruction in Iraq. On May 1, they published a scathing report of the failure of US contractors to carry out projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The report also noted that nearly nine billion dollars in Iraqi oil revenues which had been disbursed to ministries was "missing."

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/fallujah/2006/0625rebuilding.htm

[struggle4progress]

12. Iraq health care 'in deep crisis' (2004)

Last Updated: Tuesday, 30 November, 2004, 16:08 GMT

Iraq's health system is in a far worse condition than before the war, a British medical charity says.

Doctors from the group Medact conducted surveys with international aid groups and Iraqi health workers in September.

They exposed poor sanitation in many hospitals, shortages of drugs and qualified staff and huge gaps in services for mothers and children.

Medact, which monitors healthcare in post-conflict areas, .... also challenged the British government to set up a commission to establish the level of civilian casualties in Iraq ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4054105.stm


Iraq Health Care So Bad That Doctors Want Out
By Aamer Madhani
Chicago Tribune
October 5, 2005

For most of his life, Dr. Ayad Abdul Kadhem kept a laser-like focus on his goal of becoming a doctor. He finished at the top of his class in primary and secondary schools, and proved to be among the most studious of his peers at the University of Baghdad's medical school. But these days, Kadhem, now a second-year resident at Sadr City Hospital, is looking for a way out of his profession. Recently, he and five of his colleagues applied for jobs at the Iraqna mobile phone company to answer a customer help line--unskilled work he is more than willing to take so he can quit a job he has come to loathe.

"Almost anything is better than being a doctor in Iraq now," said Kadhem, 26, who didn't get the call center job. "The situation is so difficult in the medical field that many of us would quit if we could." Before the war, even most critics of a U.S.-led invasion agreed that if dictator Saddam Hussein were toppled, Iraq's long-struggling health-care system would improve. But 2 1/2 years after the invasion, health care in Iraq is foundering.

Hospitals regularly run out of the most basic medicines, and the facilities are in horrid shape. Iraqi lawmakers and doctors report that scores of specialists and experienced physicians are leaving the country because they fear they are targets of violence or because they are fed up with the substandard working conditions ...

Doctors say the work has become gut-wrenching. With ill-equipped emergency rooms, they are unable to handle the complex injuries from the violence of Iraq's streets. The Ministry of Health has an annual budget of $1 billion--about $37 per Iraqi citizen ...

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2005/1005healthcare.htm


DAILY BRIEFING
May 1, 2006

Report details problems with contract for Iraq health centers
By Jenny Mandel
[e-mail]

Poor government management and unsatisfactory contractor performance contributed to the derailment of a contract worth more than $240 million to build 150 health care centers in Iraq, government inspectors have found.

Little progress has been made on the contract since its award just over two years ago, despite expenditures of $186 million, about 77 percent of its full value, according to a report published Monday by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR-06-011).

The contract was awarded to build 150 primary health care centers with medical and dental capabilities throughout Iraq. As of early March, only six had been completed. Eight projects had been canceled, one was moved to another contract vehicle, 14 were under construction, and 121 were partially constructed but terminated by government managers due to management and funding problems.

Inspectors cited numerous additional problems with fulfillment of the contract, awarded to Pasadena, Calif.-based engineering and construction firm Parsons Delaware, now Parsons Global Services, and managed jointly by the Army Corps of Engineers' Gulf Region Division-Project and Contracting Office, the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office and the Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan ...

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0506/050106m1.htm

[struggle4progress]

13. Iraq War Results & Statistics as of October 4, 2006

From Deborah White ...
Oct 7 2006 ...

For your quick reading, I've listed key statistics about the Iraq War, taken primarily from data analyzed by various think tanks, including The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, and from mainstream media sources. Data is presented as of October 4, 2006, except as indicated ...

Iraqi Children Suffering from Chronic Malnutrition - 25% in May 2006 ...

Average Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity - 5.8

Number of Iraqi Homes Connected to Sewer Systems - 37% ...

Iraqis "strongly opposed to presence of coalition troops - 82% ...

http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm

[autorank]

14. Warm up the helicopters...get over to the embassy...

Some little nuance must have pierced the veil of ignorance shrouding the WH.

Nice work Bush. Top drawer. Your the worst f'ing president ever.

“I define success or failure as whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves. I define success or failure as whether schools are being built or hospitals are being opened. I define success or failure as whether we’re seeing a democracy grow in the heart of the Middle East,” he told ABC News.

[RonHack]

21. Let's look at this "success".

Let's see how well Bush is doing, with this new low standard of "victory":

Bush: “I define success or failure as whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves."
Reality: Policemen regularly kidnapped and murdered, insurgents rule streets, people afraid to leave house.
Result: Failure.

Bush: "I define success or failure as whether schools are being built or hospitals are being opened."
Reality: No hospitals built or completed. MOre hospitals shutting down, captured by insurgents. No schools built; renovations on existing schools only a cheap veil.
Result: Failure.

Bush: "I define success or failure as whether we’re seeing a democracy grow in the heart of the Middle East.
Reality: Democracy? In the Middle East? Where?
Result: Are you stupid or something?

The situation must REALLY be bad if Bush is calling his failures "successes".

[MonteSano]

15. k&r

[Toots]

16. "Bush* says"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[truthisfreedom]

17. what a fucking idiot. i'm sorry, but i just can't read this stuff without

blowing up at this point. everything that comes out of his mouth is a fucking lie. it's just a torrent of bullshit.

[jwirr]

18. Access to health care and education? He has failed to provide

that for a great many people in this country, Iraqi should beware of false promises. He has no intention of taking care of anyone but his rich friends who are SUPPOSED to be providing those services.

[Solly Mack]

19. imagine that

whoda thunk it

[subterranean]

20. It may be treasonous to ask this question, but...

why are American contractors in charge of the reconstruction of schools and hospitals? Isn't the unemployment rate in Iraq something like 60%? Are there no Iraqi firms capable of handling such projects? I realize the security situation is a serious obstacle, but might we not get better results for less money if we hired Iraqis to do the work? It's a crazy idea, I know.

[RonHack]

23. Ah, but you forgot Reagan's experiment

Remember the "trickle-down" economic experiment?

Instead of giving the money to the local contractors, we give it to the rich contractors. That way, the money filters down the line, from the rich to the poor.

That way the economy grows at.... what did Reagan achieve? .8 percent?

Oh, forget I said anything.

[JHB]

34. Why do you hate America, eh? You and your "logic"...

That's been a major question for the entire Iraqi reconstruction "effort".

The main answer seems to be that actually reconstructing Iraq doesn't have nearly the priority with the (mal)administration as does the care and feeding of well-connected corporate contractors.

[yellowcanine]

24. Bush says whatever the hell sounds good at the moment. Whether or not

it has any connection to reality is literally a crap shoot.

[Amonester]

26. How about this "silly" idea of spending the U.S. taxpayers's 30 to

40 BILLION dough (they haven't paid yet...) to 'build' real clinics and hospitals INSIDE the U.S.A. for ALL 'murcan citizens, INCLUDING nearly 50 MILLION who actually cannot afford any access to healtcare services themselves, huh??? :mad:

Maybe 'cuz most Doctors and such vote Democratic? :sarcasm:

[jmowreader]

27. "New" terms of victory?

These are the first "terms of victory" I've seen come out of Bush, so at least we're getting somewhere.

What Bush has said, in essence, is that victory will have been achieved when Iraq is back to the exact place it was before Bush's daddy decided to give Saddam permission to invade Kuwait, except without Saddam at the helm.

(Why did Saddam want to invade in the first place? The Kuwaitis bought themselves a Halliburton slant drill and were using it to exploit the al-Rumaila oil field...which, unfortunately, is not in Kuwait.)

[codjh9]

28. More doublespeak

We're going to 'stay the course', but now we've got new terms for strategy & victory. I hope some of our milquetoast Dem. leaders are bashing Bush for being a 'flip-flopper' on 'staying the course'.

[frogcycle]

35. Frankly, all the congresscritters

are the ones who should really be pilloried. They were parroting his message verbatim; he changes,; they don't get the word and say it a couple more times; then they catch up and he changes again.

They have SO demonstrated their complete lack of "leadership". Whereas they were trying to portray themselves as actual insiders in policy, pontificating about stay the course like they thought of it, they are like Lucille Ball trying to participate in an aerobic dance routine - two steps behind, stumbling all over the place. If they had not been trying to pretend they knew their ass from first base they would not look so stupid now. They can't even flip flop! They are like a fish on the bottom of a boat, exhausted, just twitching and gasping.

The Dems need to be going for the throat RIGHT NOW and pointing this out. The clowns were trying to "distance" themselves from bush whil still reciting the cue cards (I refer largely to John Roskam in local campaign), and this exposes them for not having an original thought in their brains. If someone backed them against a wall right now and said "what's YOUR plan?" all they could do is gulp like that fish. Tammy Duckworth, John Laesch, et al may not have complete answers, but they can at least verbalize the approach they would take to develop answers!

[SoCalDem]

29. and yet... there is no cacophony of

FLIP-FLOP...FLIP FLOP...FLIP-FLOP...FLIP FLOP...FLIP-FLOP...FLIP FLOP...
FLIP-FLOP...FLIP FLOP...FLIP-FLOP...FLIP FLOP...FLIP-FLOP...FLIP FLOP...

[MAX 1]

30. RumsFAILED

The Major combat to secure Baghdad has been a RumsFAILED.

[McCamy Taylor]

32. First he was gonna change like Baker said, then he wasnt changing

"strategy", he was only gonna change "tactics". Today, he is gonna "refocus" strategy. No word about what he is gonna do with his tactics. Maybe he will realign them. You do that every ten thousand miles, right? Tomorrow he will probably start talking about changing tires on all the military vehicles and replacing the tactics with duct tape, since it is more flexible.

:rofl:

The Office of Doublespeak is working overtime.

[madrchsod]

33. iraq had the best health care system in the arab world.

from 1992 till today the destruction of the health care system in iraq has never stopped. we caused it and how can we fix it?

[Donkeykick]

37. Give Dubya Enough...

time and he will have a new definition for a fart!:rofl:

[Rex]

38. Impose. Ha.

Such a failure from the very beginning. Not even a chance at 'winning'. Not with that attitude.

[barb162]

39. Bushco is flailing right now

I heard some bad, bad stuff on Iraq on the Charlie Rose show Friday. Like no medicine at the hospitals because the Iraqis who run the show in Baghdad basically sell the medicine to the highest bidders elsewhere in the Mideast.

[ronnie624]

45. Even if that accusation is true,

and I'm quite skeptical, it hardly accounts for a destroyed and dilapidated infrastructure. Neither does it account for a general atmosphere of extreme violence and chaos.

The article mentions a 30-40 billion dollar expenditure by the U.S. government, yet no hospitals or schools have been built. Presumably, the two projects mentioned in the article, 50 mil for a hospital and 20 mil for a school, were parts of this expenditure. The school received slap dash repairs, and the hospital was never completed. I would bet I can guess who one of the primary contractors in both cases was. I don't want to mention any names, but it begins with Halliburton (oops, I mean H).

No, I'm going to have to blame the U.S. led invasion, plundering, and destruction of Iraq for the situation there, not some doctors who may or may not be selling drugs on the black market.

[livingonearth]

40. This whole thing is really depressing me.

America deserves better leadership than this. These latest words from Bush sound so desperate and crazy. It's like...duh...those things would be good...but, WHAT'S THE PLAN TO MAKE THEM HAPPEN?

[tabasco]

41. Uncle Dickie said the bad guys are in their last throes.

Why should Lil Boots change course when we are clearly winning against the turrist dead enders?

[Supersedeas]

42. a Healthcare Crisis is not something the Admin is willing to confront:

here or there

[ronnie624]

43. More proof that the invasion of Iraq

was for the purpose of imperialist plunder and nothing more.

When will most Americans develop the courage to admit that we have committed one of the most horrific crimes in living memory?

Just recently I attempted to speak to an acquaintance of the Lancet report on Iraqi casualties. "The U.S. military is responsible for all these deaths?" he asked, "I don't believe it!"

"Really?" I asked, "Is there some portion of their data or methodology you disagree with?" knowing very well he had never even heard of the study, much less read it. "I just don't believe it!" he snapped.

Interestingly, the poor fool seems a kind and decent soul, who would do anything to help a friend in need, and just happens to be a one time Olympian. Go figure.

[aaronbees]

44. Rewriting "victory" just as he rewrites the Constitution .... eom

[0007]

47. Perhaps Ahmed Chalabi can give junior an insight?

[L0oniX]

49. access to health care ??? wha da f*ck ...do I have access to health care?

F*CK NO ! But hey, we need to get them Iraqi's health care first huh. What a bunch of ass carrots.