“LOCAL elections can often pass unnoticed by the world beyond. But Iraq’s provincial elections on Saturday January 31st are of greater importance than most. The polls are a first test of strength for Iraq’s political factions since a flawed vote in 2005 and should also give some guide to a general election that is due before the end of the year. If the polls on Saturday attract a decent turnout and pass off fairly and peacefully, Iraq will have taken a big step towards becoming a functioning democracy. But much could go badly.”
The major “flaw” in the 2005 elections, by the way, was not that the process was noticeably corrupt or incompetent but that Sunnis Arabs boycotted the balloting.
And, apparently, there’s no plausible deniability possible, they caught us with our beaks hanging out:
One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan in Isfahan province, the report cited an unnamed informed source as saying, adding that some metal rings and invisible strings were attached to the bird.
A second pigeon was picked up, but it is not clear from reports if the two pigeons were working together. Of course, the future looks none to bright for either operative:
The source gave no further description of the pigeons, neither their current status nor what their fate will be.
Here’s a real debate for you, not that phoney baloney “presidential” stuff.
I’m a long time admirer of Christopher Hitchens despite the fact that I am on the opposite side of almost every position he takes (yes, I opposed the Iraq war and still believe it was a mistake). If you want to know why I find him so much more compelling than the average leftie — even when I disagree with him — this video provides an excellent example of what sheer intellectual heft can do.
As a conservative, I find this debate disturbing. To me, both appear to have usurped (or, more charitably, adopted) positions from traditional conservatism in their arguments.
I now seriously wonder if the old dichotomies of left/right, liberal/conservative have any meaning at all. Objectively, both Eric Alterman and Hitchens appears to be arguing from a point of view that would have been considered Reaganite 20 years ago. Hitchens comes across as Nixonian on foreign policy.
Equally unsettling is the moral platform from which each man appears to argue. Limp-wrist-liberal Alterman frames every one of his positions in pragmatism while hairy-chested-leftist Hitchens argues from the point of view that the Iraq war was justified because it was a stand against evil. Does it get any more right-wing than that?
So why do I find this so disturbing and unsettling? This debate could fairly be called conservatism versus conservatism, and not a conservative in sight.
An outstanding little animation. Amazing what a fiasco that war was (for the North) until, well, until it wasn’t anymore.
For me, this sort of graphic representation illuminates an event the magnitude of the Civil war more than a thousand pages of text. I’m not knocking the many superb written works on the war, just saying that this really puts the ebb and flow of the conflict in perspective.
Did you realize how successful the Confederacy was right up until Gettysburg (July 1863) or how crucial Grant’s ascension to commander of all union armies was in 1864?
This Sunday the New York Times cautioned us that there are: Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles. With meticulously researched charts and graphs the Times documented “121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. It is important to know that the crimes occurred “after their return from war” so the reader will understand that it was the war that caused them to occur. The only problem is that in the 75 months since the first us soldier set foot in Afghanistan, there were over 90,000 other murders committed with no apparent connection to the conflict.
Given the meticulous detail with which the times researched this issue, it’s a bit surprising that they missed the fact that this means that the 1.7 million veterans of the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan commit murder at a much lower rate than the general population. Even using rough numbers it is easy enough to calculate that the rate for Iraq/Afghanistan vets is about 0.071/1000 while the rate for the general population (ages 15 through 64) is about 0.45/1000.
As noted, this is a very rough calculation that would probably not stand muster with professional statisticians, but it does give a good idea of how slanted this article actually is. Based on the real statistics — so carefully avoided in the Times article — it would appear that service in a combat zone makes people significantly less prone to criminal violence then staying home complaining about the war.
Somehow, I’m not really surprised by this.
Update: Ralph Peters in the New York Post also picked up on this story and called it what it is: SMEARING SOLDIERS. Peters also takes a closer look at the numbers than I did and calculates that the returning vets would have needed to commit “a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007″ to match the homicide rate of their peers at home.
Six years ago this morning I walked by the Fire House at Amsterdam and 66th, just as I had many times before. Over time I had gotten to know the men of Engine 40 and Ladder 35 a bit, so when I saw 35 parked in the street and 40 stopped half way out of the house, I waved at the familiar faces.
Ordinarily, my greeting would have been returned by waves, smiles and “good mornings” but this day was different. A couple of the men waved back, but there were no smiles and no salutations. There was no distress nor dread nor fear, just earnestness…a seriousness about what would soon be at hand.
I knew already that an airplane had hit the North Tower, but reports were that the damage was relatively minor (a small commuter plane was believed to be the culprit) and there would be few injuries because the floors hit were undergoing renovation and therefore, empty. I knew from the seriousness of the firefighters that the reports were not entirely accurate.
A few moments later the sirens sounded. Engine 40 and Ladder 35 whoosed past me on the way to the West Side Highway. I waved one last time. 11 of the 12 brave men on those two trucks would never return to their house on Amsterdam Avenue.
This is, by far, my favorite news photo of the week. Agence France Presse (AFP) — known throughout the world for their unbiased, objective reporting, and unabashed loathing of George W. Bush — offered up this picture as evidence of the mayhem caused by careless American soldiers wilding their way through the current troop surge.
Still, one wonders how one of the world’s most respected news agencies could proffer such a blatant fabrication with the expectation that they wouldn’t be called out on it.
I’m willing to give Harry the benefit of the doubt on this when he says that he really, really wanted to go. I think the real fault lies in a totally risk averse British military establishment. They have a point that his presence in Iraq would have begged attack, and he would likely not be the only victim of concentrated efforts to kill or capture him. Still, it reeks of fear and gives, if not tangible aid, manifest comfort to enemy skilled in manipulating perception to its benefit.
Word started leaking out over the weekend that Iran will attend a conference in Egypt later this week (May 3rd, I believe) on the future of Iran. The conference, by the way, isn’t just a platonic seminar, it is intended to work out some real issues with Iraq’s Middle East neighbors who, after Iraq itself, have the most to lose or gain by the outcome of the current tragedy. Oh, and did I mention that U.S. Secretary of State Condileeza Rice will also be attending.
It looks like the 15 Brits being held in Iran for supposedly straying over the international boundary in the Shatt al-Arab waterway are on their way home.
No doubt I’ll lose Rambo points for this, but I’m very happy to see this nascent crisis resolved with little apparent fuss or fury. True, Her Majesty’s eight sailors and seven marines should have on their way home a week ago, but it seems that the 14 men and one woman are none the worse for their experience.
What Ahmadinejad got — or believes he got — for this gesture is not immediately apparent. Certainly he pulled the tail of the British lion, but in the end he just underlined the fact that he shouldn’t have made such a big deal out of this incident in the first place.
Cheers to the Royal Navy and here’s hoping that some good comes of this.
