IMAGE HOSTING AT FLICKR.
Some weeks are tougher than others. Sometimes I just can't work up the will to work out what to say about the news of the day. I'm really busy this week, and a lot is happening, so I'm grateful as always to Digg.com and The Huffington Post for aligning articles about the news of the minute, as it were.
So anyway, here are the things that I couldn't help noticing:
REPORTS OF THE IRAQUI BODY COUNT. According to this report in The Wall Street Journal, about 600,000 Iraquis have died since the invasion.
[quote begins from "Iraqi Death Toll Exceeds 600,000, Study Estimates" by Neil King, Jr.]
A new study asserts that roughly 600,000 Iraqis have died from violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, a figure many times higher than any previous estimate.
The study, to be published Saturday in the British medical journal the Lancet, was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health by sending teams of Iraqi doctors across Iraq from May through July. The findings are sure to draw fire from skeptics and could color the debate over the war ahead of congressional elections next month.
The Defense Department until 2004 eschewed any effort to compute the number of Iraqi dead but this summer released a study putting the civilian casualty rate between May and August at 117 people a day. Other tabulations using different methodologies put the range of total civilian fatalities so far from about 50,000 to more than 150,000. President Bush in December said "30,000, more or less" had died in Iraq during the invasion and in the violence since.....
Hamit Dardagan, co-founder of Iraq Body Count, a London-based human-rights group, called the Lancet study's figures "pretty shockingly high." His group tabulates the civilian death toll based on media reports augmented by local hospital and morgue records. His group says it has accumulated reports of as many as 48,693 civilian deaths caused by the U.S. intervention....
Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Defense Department spokesman, said the Pentagon doesn't comment on reports that haven't been publicly released. Nonetheless, he said, "the coalition takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries," adding that "the Iraqi ministry of health would be in a better position, with all of its records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq."
Since 2004, the Pentagon has collected data on civilian deaths in incidents where coalition forces were involved. According to its August civilian-casualty report, those figures show that the daily civilian death rate has increased nearly sixfold, to almost 120 this summer from about 20 in early 2004. The Lancet study cites the Pentagon's numbers to back its own findings, saying the mortality-rate increases in both tabulations closely parallel one another.
[quote ends here]
They're just saying, you know?
These are horrible statistics, but I am not sure what they prove about the war. Would the carnage lessen if we pull out of Iraq, or will it simply be directed toward different people? Note that the cause of the deaths is "violence." But violence inflicted by whom? I didn't read it to say, as some of the progressive blogs are saying, that these deaths were caused by American troops.
I'd really like to hear more about the consequences of America getting out of Iraq for Iraqui civilians. That's something I feel we are morally bound to consider. Will they be better off or at least no worse off?
also:
NORTH KOREA WEAPONS TESTING: CAUSE AND EFFECT. AS ALWAYS, IT'S CLINTON'S FAULT. According to John McCain, the North Korea tests---like everything else that's happened since Bush took office, I suppose---is Bill Clinton's fault.
[quote begins from AOL News article, "McCain criticizes Clinton North Korea policy"]
Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday accused former President Clinton, the husband of his potential 2008 White House rival, of failing to act in the 1990s to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
"I would remind Senator (Hillary) Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration's policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated was a failure," McCain said at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard....
Democrats have argued President Clinton presented his successor with a framework for dealing with North Korea and the Republican fumbled the opportunity. In October 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a groundbreaking visit to Pyongyang to explore a missile deal with Chairman Kim Jong Il. There was even talk of a visit by President Clinton.
The initial breakthrough occurred in October 1994 when U.S. negotiators persuaded North Korea to freeze its nuclear program, with onsite monitoring by U.N. inspectors. In exchange, the United States, with input from South Korea and Japan, promised major steps to ease North Korea's acute energy shortage.
These commitments were inherited by the Bush administration, which made clear almost from the outset that it believed the Clinton policy ignored key elements of North Korea's activities, especially the threat posed by the hundreds of thousands of troops on permanent duty along the Demilitarized Zone with South Korea.
Reports suggesting North Korea tested a nuclear device prompted a number of Democrats to criticize Bush, arguing that he focused on Iraq , a country without weapons of mass destruction, while ignoring legitimate threats from Pyongyang.
McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he backed tough U.N. sanctions against North Korea in response to the reported test. The measures, he said, should include a military embargo, financial and trade sanctions and the right to inspect all cargo in and out of North Korea.....
[quote ends (links in original)]
I suppose his point is that Clinton erred by trying to negotiate with North Korea? What? I can't tell from this why Clinton is to blame for what's happening now, given that the current Administration has had six years to take action. What sort of action? When? I don't know. It looks to me as if "making clear from the outset" that it didn't favor Clinton's policy hasn't done anything to make the situation better, but seriously, I just have no idea what McCain is saying; that is to say, I don't understand his "cause and effect" argument here.
Is it that Clinton gave them "millions in energy assistance" that they diverted to their military? And if so, does the diversion to the military include funding for nuclear weapons construction? And---given that they've been saying for years they are going to do exactly what they did----how come we weren't all over it before now? (Okay, I do know the answer to that one).
NORTH KOREA WEAPONS TESTING: CAUSE AND EFFECT. BILL O'REILLY EXPLAINS IT ALL. Also, for some reason, Bill O'Reilly believes that the weapons testing NOW is an attempt by North Korea to influence the election against Bush. Come again? I thought that anything on the "national security" side of the argument was invariably a plus for the Republicans. Don't they sort of need this issue to distract the public from the Foley scandal and the revelations by Woodward and Powell and Spike Lee and the rest?
[quote begins from "Media Matters for America," "O'Reilly: Like Iran, "the reason North Korea is causing trouble is that it wants to influence the November election."]
From the October 9 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: Now, the reason North Korea is causing trouble is that it wants to influence the November election. As we discussed last week, Iran's doing the same thing in Iraq -- ramping up the violence so Americans will turn against the Bush administration.
That is not a partisan statement. It is a fact. America's enemies are emboldened by the stalemate in Iraq and feel they can do anything they want to do. They also hate Mr. Bush and want to weaken him as much as possible.
[quote ends (emphasis in origina)]
It's not a partisan statement in the same sense in which Fox News is "fair and balanced." But, you know, hating Bush doesn't exactly distinguish the governments of North Korea and Iran from the governments of other nations, including most of our allies.
As an explanation for "bomb testing: why now?", it seems a bit "post hoc ergo propter hoc." But I guess it's the only alternative to the argument from the other side that they're doing it now because they know we're too mired in Iraq to do much to stop them.
Which is, I guess, why the North Korea nuclear testing issue might be seen as a good issue for the Dems.
KATHERINE HARRIS AGAIN. At her website, Harris is claiming that she "beat" Bill Nelson based on the results of a straw poll. In Lakeland, Florida. At an affair called "Politics in the Park."
Take that, Bill Nelson!
I'm noting this development mainly because The Huffington Post did. Speaking as a non-Lakeland dwelling Floridian, I don't see it as all that telling. Lakeland ain't Florida. Or that's what I keep telling myself.
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