A word on casualties

If you hadn't heard by now, the surge is working, all is well and the some of the troops will be coming home within the next year and a half.

Okay, first off, to the dip shit who works for the Washington Times and thinks, or is at least trying to convince his readers, that the Democratic Party is some kind of branch of the "Green International", I will only remind you that the Democratic Leadership is responsible or partially responsible for such things in recent history as this, this, and this. For the last time, they are not a left-wing party! They have a few leftists who've decided to affect the system from the inside, but if you look at the DLC's platform you'll find something more or less similar to the New Labor platform in the UK. What is with this seeing every liberal as a latent Marxist? THERE'S A DIFFERENCE AND IT IS FAIRLY VAST, STOP USING THE TERMS INTERCHANGEABLY!

Anyway, now that we've got that out of the way, back to the surge. The main argument that surge proponents are using to justify their pre-emptive claims of victory are the newest casualty metrics. First, there is the problem of using casualties as a signal that you've won or lost. In Fourth Generation Warfare strategic objectives are almost entirely defined by social progress. If you can get the electricity on and water flowing despite the ongoing violence, you win. The difficulty of doing this is the reason why Fourth Generation wars tilt to the guerrilla side over 80% of the time.

Second, there is the problem of the numbers being presented by the papers and broadcasts of record. According to the most recent numbers from the New York Times' Michael Gordon we would be led to believe that fewer than 500 Iraqi civilians were killed in October and November. What Gordon doesn't tell you, like his counterparts at CNN, CBS and Fox, is where he got those numbers from. They are all using the data provided by the Iraq Coalition Casualties Project which I have a link to on the right hand side of this page. What's wrong with using that data? Only this little disclaimer at the top of the Civilian Casualties page, in blue text, for all to see. It isn't a complete data set. Why isn't a complete data set? Because they are hamstrung by choosing to report only incidents verified both my the media and coalition forces. Given that coalition forces are generally more concerned with keeping order than investigating each individual death it shouldn't surprise anyone that such a data set would be well under the actual totals.

For comparison we can look at the most conservative count that can purport to be reasonable at all, Iraq Body Count. As we can see on the iCasualties page linked above, there have been 257 tallied civilian deaths as of December 13. If we go over to Iraq Body Count's incident report page and take out our handy dandy calculator, we'll add up the total deaths as verified by multiple media and health organization outlets and come up with...440? But the Times and Nightly News are using iCasualties, shouldn't that... No, it shouldn't. Once again the news sources of record have failed miserably at math and intelligence gathering and unintentionally bolstered the administration and its supporters. By relying too much on military reporting and not enough on independently operating sources they've screwed up again and left an administration that should have long exhausted its credibility with yet more breathing space and clout with which to pummel the inept opposition some more. You're welcome gang.

Ron Paul: Demon Ob/Gyn of Fleet Street?

By now most have probably heard that Ron Paul has been receiving endorsements from a few white supremacist groups, including the rather infamous neo-Nazi Stormfront.

For most cool-headed observers this won't come as a surprise given that Paul is an invisibly small government, strict territorial sovereignty conservative like most of the members of these groups. However, and perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise, but most of the media, mainstream or otherwise is not so cool-headed about these things. Some, not that I'd name names, are even very eager to run wild with conspiracy theories about the Paul campaign while other use the the endorsement as proof that all disagreement with neo-conservatives is thinly veiled anti-semitism. Of course liberal and left bloggers, probably jealous of the insanely successful guerrilla campaign Paul has waged these past six months, have chimed in their two cents about this matter and ardent Paul supporter Justin Raimondo has taken them to task for it.

Of course, this is all patently stupid. Yes, as a left-winger myself I do happen to believe in the concept of "blood money" and there are just certain people and institutions I would never take favors from even if I had earned them. But, Paul isn't a lefty. He doesn't think of campaign cash the way someone more politically oriented in my direction might. And hell, once you realize that Paul is willing to take money from a Star Wars loving white supremacist as quickly as an abortion performing doctor (he has never returned a contribution this campaign), and you also note that Paul is, how do the kids say it, Pro-life, you might notice that a donation from Stormfront does not necessarily mean Paul is a racist.

Jesus Christ, it's called consistency in principles.

Why the NIE doesn't really matter

By now, anyone who'd ever read a political blog knows that a new Nation Intelligence Estimate came out Monday declaring the already obvious fact that Iran was not even close to being an existential threat to the "Free World" and Israel. Granted, it had nothing to do with Iran's undiversified, sinking economy, its ostensibly pro-Western youth population (amounting to upwards of 60% of the population), or its mostly guerrilla army who works with Hezbollah and other radical Shiite groups because it, rightly or wrongly, genuinely sees them as defensive in nature. No, the most recent NIE, which you can read for yourself here, came to the conclusion that Iran (to the best of our "intelligence") had in fact scrapped the nuclear weapons program it probably couldn't afford in the first place and decided to pursue enrichment only for the future benefits nuclear power may provide. Of course, the Russians have sold the Iranian's fuel and would probably be willing to again, which calls into question why the Iranians would have to enrich centrifuges at all, but even that would still require the administration to justify an attack on Iran without the support of fabricated intelligence. But, for all that, there is a good chance none of this will matter.

First off, just for arguments sake, there is always the possibility that, despite the neocons who infect this administration like a virus, Condi Rice has more influence than many give her credit for and the foreign policy establishment knows exactly what it's doing. There is always the possibility that in the face of the disastrous decision to invade Iraq the slightly (and the emphasis is important) more traditionally conservative wing of the state and defense departments has won over the president's ear and whenever Bush ratchets up the language about World War III it is just part of a repeating cycle of diplomatic chicken games, going on and on until Iran stops defecting. If that is the case then Secretary Rice may yet save her reputation and not be doomed to the same disgraceful legacy as Madeline Albright and Colin Powell, too fearful of their bosses' ambition to take a stand when everything was on the line and, for once in his life David Brooks will be right. The problem is, I don't think any of that is the case.

More than likely, the administration is too invested, has put too many resources toward a final resolution to pull up now. More importantly however, so have too many supporters of this disastrous, stupid, imperial Near East policy. And it's not just the right-wing fun bunch or the neo-conservatives or Joseph McCarthy's ghost either. The liberal media, in their all-knowing humanism have put too much into getting the next war as well and I can't imagine that a little bit of intelligence from the same admittedly blundering agencies responsible for this, this and this among other things, will make them change their tune. Of course all of this represents an entrenched imperial mentality on the part of our foreign policy and media establishments that set in long ago regarding national security. Caught up in a viscous Machiavellian circle where the only way to ensure safety is to dictate other's agendas because everybody is way too mad at us for dictating their agendas in the first place, the American Empire has been on the march for decades because it has evolved into the organic self-sustaining effort all free and democratic nations should fear. The Iran "thing" isn't over, not by a long shot.

Update: It seems that no one who can change course on Iran has even given the newest NIE a second thought. Good to know that Sarkozy is as predictable as ever.

Update II: The other thing about all of this that would amuse me if not for the reasons why, is that by playing the fool and acting like he hadn't heard a whiff of this intelligence until just two weeks ago, the President of the United States has managed to look like a bigger asshole than a guy who held a Holocaust denier's convention.