Tim Blair cherry-picks for cheap point-scoring

It would now appear to be okay for conservative and right-wing pundits to cite the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project as a realistic tally of Iraqi war dead. At least, that’s the impression one might take from a post at Tim Blair’s blog, in which he favourably cites IBC figures.

Then again, it may simply be a case of Blair cherry-picking a convenient number in order to score a cheap political point off one of his perennial hate-objects, Kevin Rudd, for “his repeated support for the bogus Lancet figure.”

Blair has, of course, consistently held the Lancet (Johns Hopkins) study on Iraq war mortality to be “bogus”. But if the Lancet figure is bogus, what might Blair make of Iraq Body Count’s tally, given the IBC people themselves openly concede:

Iraq Body Count (IBC) compiles data from news reports to provide a baseline number of confirmed fatalities, but it should be noted that many deaths will likely go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media.

IBC’s tally, then, will understate the death toll virtually as a design effect of their methodology. It may also be noted that IBC, unlike the Johns Hopkins study, does not attempt to capture ‘excess deaths’ from flow-on health effects of the war.

So, maybe Rudd’s support for the Lancet study is not so wide of the mark after all.

Further, perhaps it’s Blair himself who “needs a correction.” Being opinion editor for a major daily newspaper, he should at least have some competence on the topic over which he’s dissing on a public figure.

But let’s face it, such considerations are decidedly off Blair’s radar. It’s fairly evident by now that he couldn’t give a rat’s arse what the actual Iraq war civilian toll might be.

Blair’s blogging activity has always been heavily reliant on name-calling and schadenfreude. ‘Disinformation’ is, however, perhaps too strong a word for what Blair actually does, since no-one with any sense would trust in the veracity of someone who notoriously has no interest in fairness.

And anyway, from his readers’ perspective, his function has always been to pad out a ‘conservative’ narrative with a kind of quasi-cool schtik. It’s a vaudeville, more than anything else.

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George W Bush leg-pull still a work in progress

An editorial today in The Australian opines that the “legacy” of George W. Bush’s presidency is “still a work in progress.”

That’s right on the money, if by that expression the Oz means that it will require a herculean effort to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

The Oz kicks off with the weasely admission that Bush “will never be top of any of the lists of best presidents Americans enjoy analysing.” The same was undoubtedly said of Richard M. Nixon, whose interment was respectfully attended by three former or current presidents. Such was the rehabilitation of a man whose criminal conduct brought the very presidency into disrepute, while his country teetered on a constitutional precipice.

According to the Oz, Dubya’s enduring achievements – aside from that Americans will “enjoy analysing” his presidency in only a very qualified sense – are to “have kept his country safe and created a new Muslim democracy.”

If the absence of any successful terrorist attacks on US soil since September 2001 is anything to speak of, then it is that Dubya’s presidency was not a failure of such epic proportions as generally thought.

“A new Muslim democracy”? Time will tell on that one. Prior to the ascendancy of Saddam, the Iraqis had a functioning secular democracy, but somehow managed to blow it. And the strongman Saddam was appeased and supported obscenely by successive US administrations including up to the period after his infamous Al Anfal campaign against the Kurds. But never mind, the bloodbath of the last seven years has put it all to rights.

What is missing, however, from much of the late apologia for Dubya, including the Oz’s little effort here, is any mention of the ‘Af’ word.

Alright, I’ll say it: Afghanistan.

The Dubya Administration’s dereliction of its ‘mission’ in Afghanistan – in order to pursue its Misadventure in Mesopotamia, which even the Oz piece admits was “badly blundered” – was a mistake for which ‘we’ will be paying in blood and angst for the next decade or possibly beyond.

Disgustingly, Dubya has been hitting the chat show circuit expressing his “disgust” over the conduct of some of the troops he sent to do his bidding at Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Does the moron not remember that, by the time he and Cheney had finished dog-whistling up and down their country for the dogs of war, around 65 per cent of the US population believed Saddam’s Iraq to be responsible for the September 11 attacks?

It was, for Dubya, a cultivated and convenient misapprehension that undoubtedly was mirrored in the hapless service personnel he sent, thus making the Abu Ghraib abuses virtually inevitable.

Still and all, I will confidently predict that Dubya’s interment will be respectfully attended by at least three former or current US presidents.

If by then my mushy-grey succumbs to the scourge of dementia, I’ll at least have the consolation of not having the presence of mind to register such a grotesque spectacle.

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Sadness avoided

Former chief UN weapons inpector Hans Blix, interviewed recently on ABC TV, stressed that the US, with Britain and other poodle nations, would not have gone to war in Iraq in 2003 if they’d only listened to him.

Now we were also able to show them in January 2003 that there were errors in the intelligence... And in no case did we find any weapons of mass destruction... What we were able to do in that period however was to spell doubts about the evidence that the UK and the US had presented.

Yep, can’t really fault that analysis. Which leaves us with the poser: Why, after all, did the US and UK then go to war anyway?

Blix offers the following:

It was too late in the day I think for them to move off the military train. They had 250,000 men or more sitting in the desert and it would have been demoralising if nothing happened.

So, on Blix’s analysis, if the war hadn’t gone ahead, a whole bunch of (unspecified) people would have been terribly sad.

How brilliant that Blix should arrive at this conclusion, disdaining the overly simplistic explanation of US/UK overarching strategic geopolitical and mercantile objectives... for which they had long determined to go to war... and naturally cooked the intelligence in the first place...

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Iraq War Cost

Iraq War Cost*
 
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* This is not all costs, but only the costs based on the budget authority. Data is from Congressional Research Service.

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Monday moral equivalence

The Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, appears to be somehow equating the consecration of a gay bishop in the US with the US war in Iraq:

“George Bush said he was going to invade Iraq. Everyone told him not to because there would be consequences, but he did it anyway. The Americans floated the balloon in 2003 when they consecrated Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. They knew exactly what they were doing then and they know exactly what they are doing now. They knew it would be unacceptable to the majority of the Communion. They are doing exactly as they please. Either the rest of the world caves in or someone has to stand up to them.”

Hmmmm...

(via Ken L at Surfdom)

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Bush: Seleucus VII Petro-Euergetes

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger...

George W Bush, March 19, 2003: Address to the American People

Those words, uttered over five years ago, form the basis of the Bush Doctrine or orthodoxy with respect to Iraq. Note we were going to disarm a tyrant and free Iraq's people. Not to stay and occupy into the foreseeable future, rather to provide a future for Iraqis they were not going to have otherwise. It was not about oil, it was not about geopolitical considerations it was about weapons of mass destruction and freedom for the Iraqis. Indeed the operation was monikered "Operation Iraqi Freedom", one of those nonsensical names that governments and their Military arms are so fond of.

We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.

George W Bush, March 19, 2003: Address to the American People.

That is a line that has been run many times since in one guise or another. This is the religious ritual of the occupation: it is all in the name of Iraqi freedom; the spreading of democracy; the right of "ordinary" Iraqis' rights to live as they choose and without fear of persecution; that "ordinary" Iraqis might choose their own destiny and enjoy the freedoms that we in the west take for granted. We know, we know - we've heard many times and in many forms.

God forbid that it was ever motivated by the current world hegemon to secure its access to that resource which drives its industrial economy. Nor that it was ever motivated by that hegemon's geopolitical concern for a "landed" or "rooted" presence in a vitally strategic area of the world. Never let it be stated that the world hegemon might have driven this policy for resource and political security concerns. that might be too frank by far.

Today's Independent (Patrick Cockburn - a journo who has done a hell of a job these five over years) is reporting the leaking of the terms of the Bush White House's "Strategic Alliance" that it is currently forcing upon the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. A government hobbled within and without Iraq due to its zimmer-frame reliance upon US backing and increasingly viewed as "puppet" in nature. Should this deal be signed that view will be confirmed as if raised upon a new ziggurat in Babylon.

Essentially this is requiring the signing off for the continuation of the US presence in Iraq, operating from over fifty bases, for the foreseeable future. Too, it will require the Iraqi government to cede its control of Iraqi airspace (below 29,000 feet) to the US as well as to allow it to carry on its war on terror from the bases already mentioned. There is more, to quote Cockburn:

American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

This is, for all intents and purposes, what currently obtains in Iraq. Interesting that US forces should require such "immunity". The demands that the current mercenary - and lets be real here: "contractor" is simply a tasteless euphemism for those used to fight for pay in Angola and elsewhere - forces in the country want similar are absolutely unsurprising and raises serious ethical issues.

Should the Iraqi government sign this - and the pressure before the Us election will be immense - it will consign itself to the vassal status that this province has enjoyed under so many hegemonic and imperial boots in its past. The Persians set the table and the Macedonians wrote the cookbook: the locals are there to serve their implanted betters and their governments, whilst tolerated, are merely vassal or client in status.

We can then welcome, for a short time (nothing new there) the latest Seleucid Emperor: Seleucus VII Bush Petro-Euergetes ("Euergetes" in the Greek being "preserver")

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Anniversary observed

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the USA... oh yes, and its cobbled-together Coalition of the Willing.

US Vice President Dick Cheney sums up these five long years thus:

“If you reflect back on those five years, it’s been a difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavour.”

I won’t reflect — yet again — on the fact that all the assumptions and projections made by the ‘architects’ in support of this appalling misadventure have been proved wrong, wrong, WRONG!

Personally, I’m sick to death of that whole futile ‘dialog’.

It’s quite evident that there is absolutely no set of circumstances that could possibly obtain, under which those nabobs could ever admit failure in this ‘endeavour’.

UPDATE: Australia’s former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer has imparted another load of his wisdom on the punters:

“Obviously mistakes have been made, from time to time, during the five years.”

Obviously this has only now occurred to him; otherwise he would have leveled with his fellow Australians and conveyed any misgivings he might have had at the time. Right?

“I think in particular the Americans should have had more troops on the ground earlier than they did.”

I seem to recall at least one semi-desperate request from the US for more troops from its Coalition partners. Alex and his boss then apparently thought they knew better.

“The surge has been successful recently but that was very late in the piece, and I think it would have been better to have those troops a lot earlier.”

You don’t say, genius! Blah blah yadda yadda...

Please enjoy your retirement, Alex. As soon as possible. It’s on us.

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Perspective maintained

This week, another authoritative study “has found no evidence Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with al-Qaeda’s terrorist network.”

Trivia buffs will recall that Saddam’s supposed relationship with al-Qaeda was trumpeted by the Bush White House as a compelling subsidiary justification for the invasion of Iraq.

An invasion, incidentally, that former Under Secretary of Defense, Douglas Feith, has disclosed was already a done deal months before the weapons inspectors were to report on Saddam’s supposed mountains of WMD.

Such trivialities have gone righteously unremarked upon by the Muftim Tim Blair, who continues his relentless pursuit of those who peddle the Really Big Lie of the Iraq war — that fictitious plastic turkey.

Keep that Troooth a-comin’, O Great Muftim!

UPDATE

Although obviously not so important as the pursuit of troooth and purveyors of plastic-turkey-propaganda, Jack Robertson reviews the public contribution of Douglas Feith. While searingly analytical, it’s also a kind of performance-arty piece, a form which should be familiar to some readers here.

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Speaking of the war...

It’s often too easy to forget in our consumer paradise that we are a nation at war — whether declared or not — but here’s a couple of items of interest that have come across my desk...

First, the Red Crescent says 46,000 Iraqi refugees have been repatriated between September and end of 2007.

Although the accuracy of these figures is contested, this represents about 2.3 percent of around 2 million externally displaced persons.

Yep, not a bad start — and after only less than 5 years of (their) pain.

And an interesting compilation of facts’n’figures:

Key figures about Iraq since the war began in March 2003
By The Associated Press – 1 day ago

U.S. TROOP LEVELS:

• December 2007: 160,000
• January 2007: 137,000

CASUALTIES:

• Confirmed U.S. military deaths as of Dec. 31, 2007: 3,902.
• Confirmed U.S. military wounded as of Dec. 28, 2007: 28,773.
• U.S. military deaths for December 2007: 23, lowest monthly toll since February 2004.
• U.S. military deaths for 2007: 899, the deadliest year for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion.
• Deaths of civilian employees of U.S. government contractors as of Oct. 30, 2007: 1,073.
• Iraqi civilian deaths from war-related violence: According to Associated Press figures, there were at least 736 total Iraqi deaths in December 2007 — an increase over the November 2007 toll of 718.
• Total war-related Iraqi deaths in 2007, according to an Associated Press tally: 18,636
• Total war-related Iraqi deaths in 2007, according to Iraq Body Count: 22,586-24,159
• Assassinated Iraqi academics: 341.
• Journalists killed on assignment: 125.

COST:

• Stepped-up military operations are costing about $12 billion a month, with Iraq accounting for $10 billion per month, according to a July 2007 analysis by the Congressional Research Service.
• Total cost to the U.S. government so far is close to $482 billion.
• According to a November 2007 report from the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, total economic costs for the Iraq war are estimated at $1.3 trillion for the period from 2002 to 2008. This figure represents the hidden costs of the war beyond the direct budgetary appropriations, including interest costs of borrowing these funds, lost investment, long-term veterans' health care and oil market disruptions.
• A January 2007 study by Linda Bilmes of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government put the total projected cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan at $350 billion to $700 billion.

OIL PRODUCTION:

• Prewar: 2.58 million barrels per day.
• Dec. 19, 2007: 2.42 million barrels per day.

ELECTRICITY:

• Prewar nationwide: 3,958 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): four to eight.
• Dec. 18, 2007, nationwide: 4,240 megawatts. Hours per day: 11.9.
• Prewar Baghdad: 2,500 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 16-24.
• Dec. 18, 2007, Baghdad: Megawatts not available. Hours per day: 8.9.
• Note: Current Baghdad megawatt figures are no longer reported by the U.S. State Department's Iraq Weekly Status Report.

TELEPHONES:

• Prewar land lines: 833,000.
• March 13, 2007: 1,111,000.
• Prewar cell phones: 80,000.
• June 2007: 9,204,000.

WATER:

• Prewar: 12.9 million people had potable water.
• Oct. 18, 2007: 19.6 million people have potable water.

SEWERAGE:

• Prewar: 6.2 million people served.
• Oct. 18, 2007: 11.3 million people served.

INTERNAL REFUGEES:

• Dec. 18, 2007: At least 2.4 million people have been displaced inside Iraq. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, figures suggest that the 2006 rate of displacement was maintained through 2007, with recent reports suggesting a possible net return movement.

EMIGRANTS:

• Prewar: 500,000 Iraqis living abroad.
• Dec. 18, 2007: More than 2.2 million in neighboring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan. The Iraqi Red Crescent, the Red Cross' counterpart in the Muslim world, said in a December 2007 report that more than 25,000 Iraqi refugees returned, mostly from Syria, between Sept. 15 and Nov. 30.

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Brief newslets

Turkish warplanes targeting Kurdish rebels bombed villages deep in northern Iraq today, killing one woman and forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes.

But it’s okay, because it was done “with the implicit approval of US occupying forces in Iraq.”

Hang on — no it’s not okay, because the US didn’t approve it at all. But it would’ve been okay if they had...

And singer and songsmith Dan Fogelberg has died of prostate cancer, aged 56.

Meanwhile another singer and songsmith almost as well-known as Dan, Chris de Burgh, will become the first Western artist to play a gig in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Incidentally, something about the chorus of Chris’s song, ‘Don’t Pay the Ferryman’, has always bothered me...

Don’t pay the ferryman!
Don’t even fix a price!
Don’t pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side

I mean, what halfway competent ferryman would even contemplate getting you to the other side before first fixing a price that reflects market realities? And would any rational agent even want to be ferried by a person so lacking in basic commonsense?

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Intel assessment nukes ‘Iran nukes’ hysteria

George W. Bush in January 2007:

I take the Iranian nuclear threat very seriously, even though the intel on Iraq was not what it was thought to be.

Happily not too many people seem to be taking this man very seriously at all of late.

Iran hasn’t had a nuclear weapons programme since 2003, a stunning new assessment released by US intelligence agencies has found.

Perhaps this is a tad premature, but this could be the final nail in the coffin of the credibility of this clown and his troupe.

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