Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed…
Among those polled for the AP survey…the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890.
As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.
My pal John McCrea’s band CAKE is putting out a new CD of “B-Sides and Rarities” soon. You can pre-order a limited “scratch-n-sniff” edition with a bonus track here. (This is a self-released project — they’re trying to figure out a model that will allow them to bypass record company nonsense — so you can bask warmly in the knowledge that your purchase is actually helping to sustain working musicians.)
I’ll have more on this in the next few weeks, including (I think) an exclusive download from the CD.
The thing that bothers me is that one of my favorite authors gave such an uncharacteristically catty and hypocritical quote:
What’s your view of how this case has been handled?
There should have been a very quick decision by the judge as to embalming and as to where she should have been buried. Every so often I see a bit of this so-called hearing and I am embarrassed that people should engage in this public indignity and inhumanity. I think we are seeing the worst manifestations of our culture and at the time of death, the dead deserve the best manifestations of our humanity. What we have created is a media circus with no dignity whatsoever. This woman chose to have precious little dignity in her life, but the least we could do to a fellow human being is to have sufficient compassion to provide for her some dignity in death. [Emphasis added.]
Sherwin Nuland is professor of surgery who teaches bioethics at Yale as well as a prolific author books on medicine and the medical humanites. I highly recommend his book How We Die, which happens to be the publication that got him the Newsweek interview.
Nuland is one of my favorite writers, in part because his work evinces genuine compassion. I’m disappointed that he would take a swipe at any recently deceased person, especially while criticizing others’ disrespect in the same breath.
…here’s a perspective I’ve always appreciated, from the political organizer Ernesto Cortes:
“A good organizer must be angry,” he says. “Not irritated or enraged, but angry. In the dictionary you’ll find that it comes from the Old Norse angr, meaning loss or grief.”
Cortés says his grief — his anger, in the Nordic sense — stems from America’s failure to fulfill the promise of democracy, the promise that all citizens can play a meaningful role in their own governance.
What Cortes says about the root meaning of anger is, in fact, accurate:
anger
SYLLABICATION: an·ger
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old Norse angr, sorrow.
There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with being angry. In fact, the weird people are those who don’t feel sorrow over what’s happening to this country. (More on this topic here.)
“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”
It turns out Frank Gaffney is not completely reliable
Recently Frank Gaffney, the poor man’s Michael Ledeen, was on the Alan Colmes Show with Glenn Greenwald. Gaffney explained that when we invaded Iraq in 2003, we found “a hot production line for chemical and biological agents…with the plans to ramp them up for use as terrorist weapons against the United States and Europe.” I explain in detail here how and why Gaffney’s brain made this mistake.
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — A U.S. soldier broke down in tears in court as he described his role in the gang rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family last year.
Paul E. Cortez, 24, wept Wednesday as he became the second U.S. soldier to plead guilty to charges in a case considered among the worst atrocities by U.S. military personnel in Iraq.
By pleading guilty to rape and four counts of felony murder, Cortez was spared the possibility of a death sentence and must testify against the three other soldiers charged in the case.
Under the agreement, Cortez will be sentenced to up to life in prison, plus reduction in rank and a dishonorable discharge. Whether he is eligible for parole will be decided at sentencing Thursday.
He said Wednesday he raped 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi in her family’s home in Mahmoudiya last March, and that Spc. James Barker, 24, held her down.
‘’I lifted up her skirt and took off her stockings while Barker held her hands with his knees,'’ he said before admitting that he raped the teenager as she screamed. ‘’After I was done, myself and Barker switched spots.'’
Cortez offered no explanation for his involvement in the rape and murders, only saying that his intent was to rape the girl. The killing of the family was originally reported to be the work of insurgents.
Story here (h/t reader Michael S.). I assume it won’t be long before some right winger accuses me of hating the troops for posting this. Any discussion of the war must begin with the assumption that every single member of the U.S. military is an ascended being, personifying all that is good in the world and utterly beyond reproach. The reality is that they’re human beings in a tough situation, and like human beings anywhere, most of them are going to be fairly decent people doing the best they can, but some substantial minority are going to be total assholes. And of those, some are going to be psychopaths set loose in a land without apparent rules.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.
Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, right, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, talked last month about possible deployments to Iraq.
National Guard officials told state commanders in Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio last month that while a final decision had not been made, units from their states that had done previous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan could be designated to return to Iraq next year between January and June, the officials said.
I’m sure it’s no accident that the new National Guard recruiting ad features a picture of the entire planet, with a tagline that says something to the effect that “If it’s happening here” — i.e., anywhere on the planet — “we’re there.”
(Recycling went out last night but if anybody has a scan of that ad, send it and I’ll post it.)
