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Wednesday, September 15, 2004 |
219 Wounded in the Last Week
The headline speaks for itself. But it's even worse than that, and getting worse.
More than 200 U.S. troops were wounded in Iraq in the past week, the Pentagon said Tuesday, and the total since the invasion was launched in March 2003 is now 7,245.
Of the 219 wounded in the past week, 81 were returned to duty; the 138 others were not.
The Pentagon generally reports its wounded totals each week. Fatality totals are updated daily.
The number of Americans killed and wounded has grown rapidly amid an intensifying and increasingly effective insurgency. There were more wounded over the past five months — about 4,000 — than in the first 13 months of the war, when there were about 3,300, according to Pentagon reports.
The number of Americans killed as of Tuesday was 1,018, by the Pentagon's count. That includes three civilian employees of the Department of Defense. It does not include Army Spc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, who was captured April 9. His fate has not been officially resolved.
But I guess it's the media's fault for not telling us about all the schools and parks and swimming pools we're building for the grateful Iraqis.
2:36:30 PM Permalink
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Bush's imaginary conversations
Well, Bush continues to lose it. [Daily Kos]
This is a riot.
Well, Bush continues to lose it.
Allen also calls attention to this utterly fantastical tale Bush told yesterday, while arguing that his audience would have to pay more taxes to fund Kerry's plans.
"So I said to him the other day, well, how are you going to pay for them?" Bush said at the Ottawa County Fairgrounds in Holland, Mich. "And he said, 'That's easy -- just tax the rich.'"
Of course, this conversation only happened in Bush's fevered mind.
But there I was, last week, hanging out with ol' George. And so I said to him, "well, how are you going to get our soldiers out of Iraq? And he said, with that frat-boy smirk of his, 'that's easy -- in body bags and wheelchairs.'"
We cracked a few jokes about OB-GYN practicing their "love" on their patients, when I suddenly turned serious agains, "George, how are you going to pay for your $3 trillion for the proposals in your acceptance speech, far and beyond what you claim Kerry has proposed? And he said, 'That's easy -- by saddling our future generations with trillions in new debt, in addition to the trillions in debt I've already added in the past three years.'"
And after downing a few beers -- boy he's a fun person to hang with! -- I said, "George, level with me -- what are you going to do about the millions of jobs lost under your watch? And he said, 'That's easy -- by continuing to ignore the problem. Those girly men have it great. Those lucky duckies pay far less in taxes than my friends -- the ones some call the elite, but I call my base.'"
And after a few more beers we were quite tipsy. And he didn't want to talk about "important shit", so I looked into his soul, and asked him, "Puttie-George, what the hell where you thinking when you approved the Sosa trade?" And before I knew it, the Secret Service had thrown me out on the curve.
2:32:22 PM Permalink
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Beer in Moderation Could Be Good for You (AP)
AP - Beer, a health food? That's what some Canadian researchers report. [Yahoo! News - Most Emailed]
A study from the University of Western Ontario finds a brew could be good for you. The researchers say beer has antioxidant boosters that could help fight cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Not surprisingly, there's a kicker:
The study was funded by beermakers Guinness and Labatt. But the university says the financial support had no influence on the outcome.
2:16:59 PM Permalink
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Beer in Moderation Could Be Good for You (AP)
AP - Beer, a health food? That's what some Canadian researchers report. [Yahoo! News - Most Emailed]
A study from the University of Western Ontario finds a brew could be good for you. The researchers say beer has antioxidant boosters that could help fight cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Not surprisingly, there's a kicker:
The study was funded by beermakers Guinness and Labatt. But the university says the financial support had no influence on the outcome.
2:16:52 PM Permalink
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Bush and Kerry battle over science
The US presidential candidates address major scientific questions put to them by the journal Nature. [BBC News]
Mr Bush appears to have back-pedalled from his "man on Mars" ambition but he still wants man to go back to the Moon. "America will return to the Moon as early as 2015 and no later than 2020 and use it as a foundation for human missions beyond the Moon." He does not mention Mars.
Mr Kerry is sceptical. "There is little to be gained from a space initiative that throws out lofty goals, but fails to support these goals with realistic funding." However, he and John Edwards, he says, will increase funding for a continuation of space exploration.
So the BBC says that Bush has "back-pedealled" on the "man on Mars" thing. I guess that's another way of saying flip-flopped. What was clear, even then, was that he wasn't serious about it. No money committed at the time, one speech, no other references to it that I know of since then. No, like most everything else he does, he was just putting out the idea, and leaving the heavy-lifting for others.
Other than that, their answers are predicatble. No questions about, say, whether we should believe the Bible or the evidence of what we see around us about the age of the earth. No questions about censorship of science in the name of politics, just plenty of waffle room on both sides.
11:40:58 AM Permalink
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Wow:
From the New York Times, an article entitled "C.I.A. Unit on bin Laden Is Understaffed, a Senior Official Tells Lawmakers": Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress.
The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90 days, and they leave before they know enough to be able to perform any meaningful work, according to a letter the C.I.A. officer has written to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. [The Volokh Conspiracy]
9:25:26 AM Permalink
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Group offers $50,000 for proof of Bush service
"The founder of the group Texans for Truth said Tuesday that he is offering $50,000 to anyone who can prove President Bush fulfilled his service requirements, including required duties and drills, in the Alabama Air National Guard in 1972. The group made the announcement as Bush was in Las Vegas, Nevada, to address the National Guard Association's convention." (09/14/04) [Rational Review News Digest]
9:06:25 AM Permalink
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This Is too Weird for Me
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. And this is too weird for me. Via Bolo Boffin:
Bolo Boffin | 86-43-04: 1. Marian Carr Knox was Killian's secretary. She would have typed the memos.
2. The CBS memos are fake. The typefaces are wrong for what was in the office. There are stylistic differences in how Knox would type the memos. Terminology like "billets" and "administrative officer" are Army terms, not ANG terms.
3. The CBS memos reflect real documents that once existed. Knox remembers very vividly "when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that was going on about it." They accurately reflect Killian's viewpoint and memos that were in a "cover your back" file that Knox maintained for Killian. There may not have been a memo-for-memo connection, but
So the story is: The memos are forged, but they're telling the truth.
[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]
8:54:37 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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