Yesterday's N.Y. Times reveals that most Republican proposals to save Social Security rely upon deep cuts to future beneficiaries to make up for anticipated shortfalls in the Social Security Trust Fund.  According to the piece:

Some of the Republican proposals would raise the age when people can start to receive benefits. Others would reduce payments to beneficiaries to account for longer life expectancies. Still others would reduce payments to married couples and scale back the annual increases that are made to keep pace with inflation.

But the biggest single idea is included in the plan the White House most often points to, abandoning the practice of setting benefits as a share of people's pre-retirement earnings.

Critics of the administration contend that Mr. Bush is using the tangible allure of personal accounts to mask a profound reduction in the government's main safety net for the elderly.

As usual, with this Administration you don't get all the facts.  Citizens should be aware that other options, such as raising the cap on payroll taxes, could go a long way towards narrowing the gap.  Stay on top of this story, stay in contact with your representatives and make sure that Social Security is not destroyed.

An article in today's N.Y. Times indicates that C.I.A. interrogators were ordered to stay away from interrogations where torture was being used:

A classified directive issued by the agency's headquarters on Aug. 8, 2003, to all its personnel in Iraq advised that "if the military employed any type of techniques beyond questions and answers, we should not participate and should not be present," according to an account provided by a senior intelligence official.

The Bush Administration's skirting of the line of providing sanction to the use of torture and physical abuse of suspects was more than immoral--it harmed the nation's prosecution of the War on Terror.  According to Willie J. Rowell, former, Army C.I.D. Agent, interviewed for Sy Hersh's stunning best-seller, Chain of Command, the use of force with prisoners is invariably counter-productive.  “They'll tell your what you want to hear, truth or no truth,”  said Rowell.  “You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say . . . you don't get righteous information.” (p. 66.)

When the torture photos and memos finally came out, damage was done to the U.S. war effort.  Allies became especially wary of helping the U.S., who appeared to be engaged in a futile and morally bankrupt enterprise.  The torture did wonders for the insurgents, who scored a victory without firing a shot.

The first step in winning the fight both in Iraq and against terrorism is to win the hearts and minds of those who might be inclined to provided tacit support to insurgents in Iraq and terrorists everywhere.  We can't do that when our own government's actions are stained with immorality.  Step one will be a full accounting to both Iraqis and Americans.  Only then can we begin to rebuild the trust that will be needed for victory in Iraq and in the War on Terror as well.

From “Rumsfeld's Rules”

It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.

So true.  Wow, I never knew the man was so wise.

Two hundred years ago yesterday, on December 10, 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's army appeared before Savannah, Georgia.  It was one of the last acts in a continuous Confederate retreat that had begun in Tennessee earlier that year. 

Confederates again retreated yesterday--this time it was the Battle Of Cary Christian School, in Cary, N.C. As GH reported last week, hatemonger Confederate Apologists at the school had been using a book in history classes entitled “Southern Slavery As It Was.” which argued that “nearly every slave in the South enjoyed a higher standard of living than the poor whites of the South -- and had a much easier existence.”

Cary Christian School beat a hasty retreat before the advances of the decent people of North Carolina.  They dropped the book from the curriculum because of “faulty footnotes and citation errors in the publication.”  

Apparently the parents at the school found out what their kids were being taught, and the people running Cary Christian School found out that America was a decent place, filled with decent human beings.

Presidential Press Secretary “Little Mac“ Scott McClellan, again showing that this Administration is still a bit confused about that Saddam character: 

Q But it's important for the Iraqi people to close the chapter on Saddam Hussein, that he will be tried for his crimes, and that he will not return to power. How can that be accomplished without the support of the United Nations?

MR. McCLELLAN: He will be tried for the oppression and brutality of his regime. He is someone who is no longer carrying out the atrocities on the American [sic] people. He is now in jail. There is a legal process that has been put in place, and the Iraqis will move forward on that legal process.

New GYWO:

Atrios reported today that a North Carolina Christian School is using a revisionist booklet on slavery in its curriculum.  The booklet, “Southern Salvery, As It Was,” was published in 1996 and authored by the Reverends Steven Wilkins and Douglas Wilson.  I’m familiar with the  Presbyterian dynamic duo’s work, and it is jaw-dropping to say the least.  Atrios highlighted some of the juicy excerpts:

• "Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence." (page 24) 

• "Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care." (page 25)

• "But many Southern blacks supported the South because of long established bonds of affection and trust that had been forged over generations with their white masters and friends." (page 27)
  
• "Nearly every slave in the South enjoyed a higher standard of living than the poor whites of the South -- and had a much easier existence." (page 30)

Fellow Presbyterian Pastor Jack Davidson has written an excellent and scholarly critique of this racialist manifesto.  Reverend Davidson’s conclusion aptly sums up the revisionist tripe:  “Like the opinions of Jefferson Davis, Wilkins and Wilson's booklet provokes incredulity and withers when it is exposed to the broader reality of slavery in the South.”

More needs to be written about this pair. 

Let me begin with Reverend Wilkins of Monroe, Louisiana. 

He is the founder of the Southern Heritage Society and a member of the League of the South’s board of directors.  The names of these organizations send a shiver down my spine.  Say those names out loud and you can't help but hear a band playing “Dixie“ in the background.

The Southern Heritage Society appears to be a think-tank organization of sorts; its members recently met for their 14^th annual conference, which may or may not have included a good ol’ fashioned cross burnin’.  The agenda of their first conference reveals all you need to know about the Southern Heritage Society:

Held in 1991, our guest speaker this year was Dr. Terry Rude, professor of theology, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina. He spoke on the following topics:

• The Cause of the South
• The South Was Right
• Confederate Manhood

Confederate Manhood?  Sounds like a Dixieland gay porn magazine.

What is the League of the South, you might ask?  According to its president, Dr. Michael Hill, it is an organization founded in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that “seeks to advance the cultural, social, economic, and political well-being and independence of the Southern people by all honorable means.”

Dr. Hill fails to define “honorable,” but his missive tips his hand  (Notice the doctor’s misspelling of the word recognizing: he uses the British form of the word.  Yet before you conclude that Dr. Hill was making an editorial statement about the damned Yankees forcing Webster’s spelling on the brave learned men of the South, notice that he uses several –ize suffixes with the proper American spelling.  Oops.).

“Recognising [sic] that cultural regeneration must precede political regeneration, our initial goal is to give form and direction to "The Community of the Southern People." Only when we begin to rediscover who we are as a people can we save our civilization. The people of the South must come to understand that they indeed are a "nation" in the organic, historical sense of the word. As individuals and communities, we must secede culturally from a world that is waging cultural genocide against our traditions, our heritage and our values. If we do this, and in the process revitalize our culture, then perhaps we will be able to successfully pursue a political course toward independence and freedom. Once The League of the South has made "The Community of the Southern People" a reality, then we can pursue our political objectives: a return to constitutional republicanism and true federalism, or if that should prove unattainable, secession.

Secession, or self-determination, is the ultimate right of free men; and in the spirit of our Founding and Confederate forefathers, we shall, if necessary, invoke that principle once again.”

Ah, Secession.  What a lovely thought.  Do these slack-jawed yokels really think we feel threatened by the prospect of Southern secession?  Get on with it, Bubba. 

Now lest I find Reverend Wilkins guilty by association, this comes straight from the horse’s mouth:

“We are all children today. Historian Barbara Tuchman made a most helpful observation concerning the relationship of a nation's history and its present direction. She said this: "A nation's history governs its present actions but only in terms of what its citizens believe their history to have been.

In other words, it's not so much what actually happened that influences the present course of a country, but what its citizens believe to have happened. A nation deceived about its past can easily be manipulated in the present.

For this reason, history is a powerful ally to revolutionaries. A nation deceived about its past can be easily manipulated in the present. Those who write the history books mold the thinking and set the agenda of the next generation (and sometimes a number of future generations). For this reason, one of the first things the communists seek to do is re-write history from their own perspective. To rob a nation of its history is to rob it of the strength and wisdom of the past. We have been robbed. And we are in grave danger as a consequence. Modern historians are, for the most part, revolutionaries. They have re-written history in order to discredit and defame Christianity and its influence in this nation. The battle for freedom and reformation is not going to be won apart from reclaiming our history. If we are deceived about our past, it will be a tremendous hindrance to reformation in the future.

What most Americans believe to have happened, never did, at least not in the way they think. We have been taught mythology for fact, fiction for truth. And one the keys in our present struggle for reformation is how well we are able to recapture the heritage which has been taken from us by unbelieving historians.“

This monologue is the perfect segue way to Wilkin’s vision of the Civil War.  Historians have duped Americans. 

“We must understand the epochal effects of the Northern victory in the War of 1861. The victory of the revolutionary party (the Republicans) spelled the doom of Constitution government in this country.”

The War of 1861?  Don’t you mean the Civil War?

“A more accurate term for the "Civil War" would be the War for Southern Independence. A Civil War is a war between two factions within the same nation; the War that took place in 1861 was a war between two nations - The USA and the CSA.”

Silly me.  But the Civil, er, War of 1861 was over slavery, right?

“Slavery was of course a factor in the War of 1861 (notice how diplomatic I am being here!), but I don't believe it was THE cause.

In 1861 President Lincoln made it clear that slavery was not really the main issue (at least in his view). The main concern for him was preserving the union and he didn't care how that happened (i.e. by freeing slaves or by allowing slavery to continue) - he was only concerned to preserve the union.

In January of 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation which made the war more or less "officially" a war to free the slaves. Many northerners rebelled over the proclamation. Numerous northern soldiers threatened to return home and northern state legislatures passed resolutions denouncing it, but it accomplished its purpose (keeping any European nation, chiefly England) from entering the war on the side of the South.

The proclamation only applied to slaves held in Southern states and only in those Southern states which were NOT occupied by Federal troops (thus, Louisiana was excluded). It had no effect on those slaves held in northern states or in those areas of the South which were under Federal control. In other words, it was a purely symbolic action intended for propaganda purposes.”

I see.  And the Underground Railroad was simply a means of stealing the South’s labor base to bring about its economic ruin.

Wilkins is also an authority on the Salem Witch Trials, and is quick to defend the Puritans from that pesky Jewish playwright, Arthur Miller, who transmuted the good people from Massachusetts into monsters. 

“The entire Salem episode lasted less than a year (1692). There was no "witch-hunting frenzy" prior to 1692 (only 12 people were ever tried for witchcraft). By contrast, the witch hunting which occurred in Europe lasted over two hundred years.

The Salem "hysteria" of 1692 did not see hundreds burned at the stake as is often imagined. Only 23 people died as a direct result of the trials. . . . In all, only around 100 people were ever accused of witchcraft in Salem, of whom 50 (by some counts) confessed their guilt. Some of these confessions were coerced and others may have been motivated by self-interest, as confessors were not tried or executed. Still, the fact remains, that many were in fact guilty of occult practices.”

Come on people!  Only 23 people were executed!  Show some perspective!

Wilkins’ words eerily remind me of the vitriol spewed by racist “scholar” Revilo Oliver, the longtime University of Illinois professor with the palindrome appellation.  Unlike Wilkins, Oliver completely rejected Christianity, but he shared the Reverend Wilkins’ zeal for revisionist history and love for the white race.  Here is Professor Oliver's view on American historians: 

“[R]emember that for generations venal "American historians," most of them also Anglo-Saxons, have been as ready as the Fathers of the Church to lie and forge for sweet righteousness's sake, and "educators" have injected their lies into the minds of school children, who are told about our glorious "Civil War" and how noble it was to emancipate those darling savages by killing so many of the young men who included the best blood of our race and thus genetically impoverishing our nation and our race forever.

As a result of that great catastrophe, the level of intelligence in America sank so low that, instead of learning from the terrible Holy War against the South, hordes of nitwits rushed to Europe in 1917 and 1941 to fight more insane Holy Wars and destroy what was left of civilization.”

Now after you swallow a Pepcid, read Professor Oliver’s take on the Puritans and their link to the Civil, er, War of 1861.  Notice how he essentially skips discussion of the Salem Witch Trials.

“In the seventeenth Century a considerable number of Englishmen, who had read the Jew-book until their minds were so warped they couldn't get along with their neighbors in England, migrated to what is now New England. We have all heard about the "stern and rockbound coast" and the land they made "holy ground" by their determination to worship their god in their own way, and it is true that they bore many hardships bravely and that, although they wasted some time by preaching to Indians instead of killing them, they did acquire the territory they wanted. They are said to have shown a certain admirable commercial honesty, although it is not clear how that is to be reconciled to the reputation of Yankees as being second only to Jews in diddling unwary customers. The Puritans had an especially Judaic form of Christianity, but so long as they were content to harass only each other with their righteousness, we have no reason for censuring them. De gustibus and all that.

The Puritans, however, soon felt the religious itch to spread their holiness by meddling in other people's affairs, and they doubtless have some responsibility for accelerating the progress of the disease in this country and bringing it to the stage of high fever and delirium. When their malice and envy was excited by the prosperity and culture of the southern states and, no doubt, the contrast between the climate of the South and the harsh winters of the bleak land they had chosen for themselves, their Christian lust to destroy became acute, and from New England came the plague of Abolitionists, who hypocritically pretended love for niggers to cover their yearning to impoverish and ruin the South.

The hate-crazed fanatics were eventually able to instigate an armed invasion of the Southern states, with, of course, the clandestine but powerful help of the Jews, who know how to profit richly from every disaster to the nation in which they have lodged themselves. And they do so righteously, for, as all Christians know, old Yahweh promised (Exod. 23.27-30 et passim) to help his pet bandits destroy every people whose territory they infiltrate, and to do it by stages until the Jews have multiplied sufficiently to take the whole territory for themselves.“

Now as for Reverend Douglas Wilson: he is pastor of Christ Church in Moscow (of all places), Idaho, and teaches theology at New St. Andrews College.  To his chagrin, his namesake is a somewhat effete designer on TLC’s show Trading Spaces.  Aside from his revisionist booklet on slavery, I haven’t found as much evidence of racialism.  However, here is Reverend Wilson’s view on sexual mores and how parents should discuss sex with their teenage sons:

“My wife and I first encountered this when my son was a little boy and they were at the supermarket checkout counter. There was a magazine there with a woman almost wearing something and my wife was using her as a teaching opportunity.

She started to explain to my son that this was an awful, gross thing. I told my wife afterwards that a woman might look at that and see nothing but the grotesque nature of it, but for a guy there's all sorts of pleasant things that strike him initially. Even mothers need to say to their sons, "That looks good, doesn't it? The Bible says it looks good at the beginning, but at the end is death."

I’ve a feeling he’s the guy who keeps ratting out Howard Stern to the FCC.  I feel a bit sorry for the guy.  I mean, look at him.

He seems happy enough, but since his wife views the female body as an “awful, gross thing,“ things can't be too peachy in the Wilson bedroom.

So these are the people educating the young impressionable minds of Cary, North Carolina.  Thank you, Atrios, for reminding us all of these crusaders for hate.

Mel Gibson has bought himself a Pacific Island.  For the modest price of $15 million, Gibson has landed an “exclusive gateway for his friends and family” and a sanctuary from liberals and Jews.

On Wednesday in Kuwait, Spc. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard posed this zinger to the Secretary of Defense:

“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?“

To which the ever reassuring Rumsfeld replied: “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have . . . . You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up.“

Today in India, the Secretary Don had this to say to reporters when he was asked about Spc. Wilson:

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing.“

Translation: Somebody better silence that son of a bitch.

UPDATE: 9:34 PM: That damned liberal media.  There's one way to pierce the bubble.  Unfortunately, now the focus in the media will be on the ethics of reporters, rather than the plight of our soldiers.

Gerry Spence, the greatest living trial lawyer and champion of the underdog, has written an amusing, but quite convincing, first-person narrative about the 2004 election.  Keep in mind that Spence lives and practices law in Wyoming, a state redder than a Maraschino cherry, land of Matthew Shepard's murderers, where GOP politicians roam as freely as the buffalo, deer, and antelope.  The “voice” in his narrative is the type of person who has frequented Spence's juries for more than 50 years.  He knows folks like these well.  And I daresay he'd be the first to tell you that nobody can win over a person who carries these kinds of deep-rooted prejudice.

Democratic candidates for office take notice.  Forget about winning over these voters.  Do not compromise.  Appeal to the center and the left and take no prisoners.

Josh Marshall today hit it on the head and explained exactly why the Democratic position must be that Iraq was wrong, but that eliminating the radical Islamic terror threat is important, regardless of whether it is as big as popular opinion seems to think it. 

According to Josh, unlike the Cold War threat from the totalitarian Soviets:

Placing context or limits on the danger posed by Islamic terrorism is a hazardous business these days. But unlike communism in 1947, militant Islam simply does not pose an existential threat to our civilization. It just doesn’t. It puts us all physically at risk. And especially for those of us who live in DC, New York or other major urban areas, it could kill us tomorrow.

But aside from middle eastern immigrants in western countries, this ideology has close to no support anywhere outside the Muslim world. As an ideology it controls at best a few small states; and it has possible access to Pakistan's small nuclear arsenal. But where is the danger of the Islamist takeover of any of the world’s great powers? China? The US? Europe? India? Japan? Brazil? Will Germany or Canada becomes ‘finlandized’ by Islamist power? That doesn’t mean the danger doesn’t exist, only that it’s different. And those are fundamental differences we shouldn’t ignore.

These tensions explain exactly why we had problems in this electoral cycle on the Presidential level. 

Its one of the best posts of the year and worth at least one read.

I've never seen it put better.  I've been trying to put my finger on what has happened to me poltically over the last few years.  Finally, Kevin Drum hits the spot: The Radicalization of the Center-Left.  Yep, that's me!

Who is most responsible for the Iraq mess?  Karl Rove is.

For those who see the war as a singular mistake, the question of responsibility looms large.  Who or what was responsible?  What systemic or other failure allowed this blunder to go forward and redefine the meaning of military error?  How can future mistakes like the Iraq Invasion be prevented in future?

These questions will be of deep interest to future history professors.  More importantly, these questions are critically important to today's foreign-policy debates.

Karl Rove is the single biggest reason for our predicament in Mesopotamia today.  Let me explain how:

Rove's political strategy works by taking an emotional issue, taking a strong stand on it, and squeezing all straddle out of the issue.  The Administration's stand on the Iraq war was no different.  Its positions were staked out aggressively and all of the pulpit power of a wartime president was used to pressure the war's opponents, both principled and practical.

The result was predictable.  First, public opponents of the war found themselves isolated by the tough rhetoric of the President, whose advisers whipped up fear with statements such as Condi Rice's now infamous Meet the Press whopper:  "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."   Public opinion echoed the sentiments as this post from Shape of Days a mere week after Rice's comments shows:

There's no middle ground. There's no "maybe." We, the civilized peoples of the world, commit ourselves to the goal of wiping terrorism as a practice from the face of the earth in our generation. And you are either with us, or against us.

Real criticism was moved to the sidelines.  In the media, doubters were relegated to back pages, while those who held their nose and printed lies spread by operators like Ahmad Chalabi made the ledes.  No wonder the Iraq war had a healthy 72-25 advantage in a  3/22-23/03 Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll.  Rational discourse and expectations regarding the war became hard to come by. 

But the “You're with us or against us” political strategy had a even more corrosive effect on the internal debate about the war and the post-war planning within the Bush Administration.  James Fallows in his brilliant “Blind Into Baghdad” piece (sorry subscription only) in the Atlantic Monthly detailed how those who asserted that post-war planning should plan for every eventuality were dismissed as being against the war.  The result was that post-war planning was largely ignored.

Thus, although Rove's strategy of picking an emotional issue, the defense of the United States, taking a strong position on that issue, and squeezing out all of the middle ground available worked wonders for generating political support for the war, it destroyed the kind of robust debate needed to present serious questions about the war's utility and wiped out the planning for the peace.

The next question to be asked is what to do if it happens again?  With the White House rumbling about Syria and Iran, figuring out how to stop another train wreck becomes a priority.

The answer lies in old-fashioned, under-the-radar politics.  Although open dissent is important, our current position is difficult because of lack of leadership offices at the federal level.  Furthermore, anyone arguing against aggressive foreign policy moves being made against a foreign state risks political ruin because of appearing disloyal.

What is needed is a conduit to get to the Republican leaders in Washington.  The way to reach them is through their most powerful constituency, Corporate America.  There is no doubt that expanded war in the Middle East will hurt corporate bottom lines due to high oil prices, uncertainty, and the required runaway borrowing needed to finance more adventures.

The Democratic leadership must therefore approach the leaders of big American corporations and make a pitch for a more restrained foreign policy that is good for the economy.  These leaders have real pull with the Republicans and can move forward a rational foreign policy agenda at a time when no rational answers seem to be forthcoming from the majority party.

Will it work?  Only time will tell.

Meeting with some of America's finest, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld got a shock today when the soldiers began to talk back.  In a Q & A sesssion,  Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the  278th Regimental Combat Team, made up mostly of Army National Guard soldiers from Tennessee, asked:

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"

The crowd's response?  2,300 U.S. servicemen and women let out a big Army cheer.

Why can't the press ask these kinds of questions?

Barack Obama, yesterday at the Gridiron Club in D.C.--commenting on how people in his father's native Kenya think that his election would mean the building of billions of dollars in new roads, bridges, hospitals, and schools in their country. (Chicago Tribune, registration required).

"So I've tried to explain how it works these days," he said. "First comes the invasion, and then billions in aid."

Mark Schmitt over at the Decembrist has a very good post today about how Democrats need to think about their duties as an opposition party.  Being an opposition party is not so much about opposing everything that comes down the pike, but taking apart Republican proposal, magnifying the most ridiculous elements of them and then constantly making the Republicans defend those proposals.  Obviously there is a lot of material out there right now and as Mark points out, just as Republicans mastered this technique during the Clinton administration and its fertile territory for Democrats if they decide to step up.  I mention this because after the last election it seems that many in leadership position in the Democratic party are more content thinking that they retain some vestige of being a majority party or still have some input in the legislative process and are not sure how to reframe upcoming debates in their favor.  This is like continually apologizing for nominating George McGovern in 1972, when the real damage to the country was done by Richard Nixon's second term.  Remember, just playing defense gets us nothing.  Make the Republicans defend their policy proposals, and a healthy dose of ridule or mockery goes a long way!

Kevin Drum takes this approach and suggests we need to make conservative bloggers defend, or own, the more ridiculous positions taken by very radical elements of the Republican coalition.  They have Whoopi Goldberg to ridicule, why shouldn't we have Pat Robertson?  Give it a read and for that matter, try it out yourself.  After all, being on offense never means you have to say your sorry!  Damn the torpedoes...let's head right for them!

From Today's White House Press Conference with General Scott “Little Mac“ McClellan:

Q Scott, a highly reliable source tells me that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is displeased that the fact that he's staying on was announced by a "senior administration official," and that he would like the President to announce it formally. Does the President plan to do so?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the President is not making any change. The President asked Secretary Rumsfeld to continue to serve in the administration last week, during their regular weekly meeting. The President is pleased that Secretary Rumsfeld agreed to stay on in that position. Secretary Rumsfeld is someone who is providing very strong leadership during a time of war. We remain a nation at war, as Goyal brought up, and the President appreciates the fact that he's agreed to serve as a member of his team and looks forward to continuing to work with him to make the world a safer and better place.

Q Can you say the same thing about Treasury Secretary John Snow?

Q Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday that he wanted the President to submit a list of potential Supreme Court nominees to be considered when a vacancy occurs. This seems to suggest the Democrats feel they have a mandate to continue obstruction of judges, since they only lost four Senate seats instead of the nine that would constitute a filibuster-proof minority -- majority, I'm sorry. Is the President likely to pre-approve Court nominees with the minority Democrats in the Senate?

Yep.  Skipped right over the question about Snow.  They don't even try denials anymore.  They just hang you out to dry.

Some commentators and bloggers look at the numbers of American dead in Iraq, compare them to the numbers of dead in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War and try to make the case that the situation is not as bad as in those other conflicts.  According to these commentators, the “low number” of dead in Iraq relative to other wars is evidence that we are succeeding there. 

However, comparing the statistics from these wars paints a false picture of what is really going on in Iraq because our medical care is far more advanced.  According the U.S. Army Medical Command, the ratio of killed to wounded was one to three in World War II, and one to four in both Korea and Vietnam.  That means that the number of U.S. soldiers, airmen and Marines dead is lower per combat engagement than in other wars and that comparing the number of killed in action by war does not show what the true intensity of combat operations in Iraq really is.

A quick look at the numbers shows that the intensity of combat operations in Iraq is far greater than the number of dead might indicate.  As of this writing, the number of U.S. military personnel killed by enemy fire in Iraq is 1106.  The number of causalities from Operation Iraqi Freedom processed by Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany by the end of November, 2004 was 17,868.  The number of troops listed as wounded-returned-to-duty (returned to action within 72 hours) at the end November, 2004 was 4503.  All told, this adds up to 22,371. 

If our troops had only the medical care of the World War II, G.I., there would be approximately 7,457 Americans killed in action to this point in the war.  If our medical care in Iraq was only as good as our medical care in Korea or Vietnam, 5593 U.S. troops would have been killed in Iraq today.

These back-of-the-napkin figures indicate that Operation Iraqi Freedom is not going well at all.  Were the numbers anywhere near what they were in Vietnam, Korea, or World War II, the political landscape in this country and in Iraq would be far different. 

Ted Kennedy was right.  Iraq is George W. Bush's Vietnam.  He just has better P.R. than LBJ.

Oh Lord, please explain to me why I can't get enough of Not Nick Nolte's Diary, formerly known as Nick Nolte's Diary.  Perhaps it has something to do with lines like this:

The moon lorded over the ocean like a obscenity.