New Reuters wire story, and it’s not as crazy as it may sound. Melting arctic ice is exposing a whole new world of carbon-emitting organic matter in the air.

So, yes. Woolly mammoth poop may help kill us all.

Happy Monday, everybody.

I thought I already knew the entire extent of Alan Greenspan’s creepiness. I was wrong:

Shortly after Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic’s comment that “the book was written out of hate.” Mr. Greenspan wrote: “Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”

I suspect someone somewhere once wrote a similar letter to the editor about Mein Kampf. But they didn’t end up Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

EARLIER: The adamantine thought patterns of Greenspan’s wife.

Rep. John Boehner’s communications director has now provided an excuse for his boss’s already-notorious comment to Wolf Blitzer that the blood of Americans is a “small price”:

“Wolf asked about the money spent in Iraq, and that’s what Mr. Boehner was referring to when he said our troops’ efforts are critical for the safety and security of our country.”

This is, of course, precisely the excuse predicted over in Puduland — and, as described in advance, a rather horrifying admission that when confronted with both dollars and American blood in the same question, the GOP’s leader in the House only hears the dollar amounts.

The predictability of the current leadership’s inhumanity would be almost amusing if it weren’t so goddam awful.

Two points to add to Jon’s post, directly below this one, on the possible Iraqi death toll:

One: when random Americans were polled a few months ago by the Associated Press, the median guess for the death toll was under ten thousand. So there’s a fair chance that however bad you may think Iraq is, you might want to multiply it by one hundred. We are talking about a possible literal megadeath. On our watch.

Two: predictably, the new estimate has already been dismissed out of hand by the Pentagon, as was last year’s Lancet study. But the Lancet study’s methodology is actually widely accepted; even John Zogby said it was “as good as it gets.” And the new poll, conducted by a respected firm whose clients include the Conservative Party, the Bank of Scotland, and Morgan Stanley — not exactly a bunch of raving lefties — is (as Jon notes) simply consistent with the Lancet study.

Almost completely forgotten now is the November, 2002 estimate by Medact, the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, that an invasion of Iraq and subsequent civil war “could cause half a million deaths.”

And rightfully so, since subsequent events have completely discredited them. This is from a British polling company working in Iraq:

In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.

Previous estimates, most noticeably the one published in the Lancet in October 2006, suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths).

These findings come from a poll released today by O.R.B., the British polling agency that have been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005. In conjunction with their Iraqi fieldwork agency a representative sample of 1,461 adults aged 18+ answered the following question:-

Q How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.

None 78%
One 16%
Two 5%
Three 1%
Four or more 0.002%

Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003.

The Los Angeles Times writes about it here. Note the results are in line with Just Foreign Policy’s attempt to extrapolate from the second Lancet study.

(via)

That’s what the Iraqis have asked for, and gosh, it just never occurred to President Bush to think of such a thing, but if that’s what they want, well doggone it …

Oh, wait.

The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush’s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: ‘The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.’

The PNAC document supports a ‘blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests’.

This ‘American grand strategy’ must be advanced for ‘as far into the future as possible’, the report says. It also calls for the US to ‘fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars’ as a ‘core mission’.

(And conveniently enough, the military’s been hard at work building permanent bases.)

• Tony Karon: “Is a Jewish Glasnost Coming to America?: Despite a Backlash, Many Jews Are Questioning Israel”

• Tom Engelhardt runs his third TomDispatch piece looking at Iraq via numbers, “Progress by the Numbers.” Previously in the series: “Iraq by the Numbers” and “Escalation by the Numbers.”

Be sure to check out Laura Rozen’s posts about the strange case of Alexis Debat, here, here, here and here.

It’s a particularly shocking lesson in the fact that, in terms of providing accurate information, the media is an incredibly rickety contraption. The reason for this, of course, is that the media doesn’t exist to provide accurate information. It exists to make as much money as possible for its owners. It does an excellent job at that.

And yet people—well, upper middle class white people—have a deeply held commitment to the idea the media exists to be accurate, and in fact does give you a tolerably accurate view of the world. Why this bizarre delusion persists is an interesting question.

is spot on as usual:

It really is the height of strangeness to witness the shrieking and self-righteous rage over the MoveOn ad as though such insinuations are prohibited in American political debates, the Line that Cannot be Crossed. That line is crossed routinely, and has been for decades, including when directed at a whole array of American combat veterans. Ask George McGovern about that. The only difference this time — the sole difference that has so upset Joe Klein and his fellow media mavens — is that it is being directed at the side that typically wields such accusatory rhetoric, rather than by them.

(deleted, problem solved. Many thanks for all responses.)

Time to rerun this.