THIS MODERN WORLD

When the new Lancet study came out estimating excess Iraqi deaths at 655,000 since the war began, America’s right wing knew one thing right away: it was wrong. That was certain.

Unfortunately, they then had to go to the trouble of deciding why it was wrong. And keeping an all-encompassing fantasy world functioning is hard work. Reality is a powerful and remorseless foe. So you can understand why Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review didn’t quite feel up to it. She outsourced the job to someone working on Capitol Hill who emailed her this:

The article below will be a story today, even though it shouldn’t…Even Human Rights Watch said the earlier report by these same researchers was “certainly prone to inflation due to overcounting.”

Now, the Human Rights Watch part is true. Here’s the passage from an October 29, 2004 Washington Post story:

“The methods that they used are certainly prone to inflation due to overcounting,” said Marc E. Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, which investigated the number of civilian deaths that occurred during the invasion. “These numbers seem to be inflated.”

But:

Mr. Garlasco says now that he had not read the paper at the time and calls his quote in the Post “really unfortunate.” He says he told the reporter, “I haven’t read it. I haven’t seen it. I don’t know anything about it, so I shouldn’t comment on it.” But, Mr. Garlasco continues, “like any good journalist, he got me to.”

Mr. Garlasco says he misunderstood the reporter’s description of the paper’s results.

And:

Few reporters, apparently, understood what the study actually said. Fewer still called Garlasco after he himself had time to read it. “I hate the interview I did for The Washington Post,” he says. “I was on the train, I hadn’t read the report yet [when the Post’s reporter called for comment]. In general, I’m not as negative as that [Post] report made me seem. This is raising issues that are not heard of much in the U.S.”

This is not incredibly difficult information to come by. If you search Google for “Garlasco Lancet Iraq” you’ll find Garlasco’s repudiation of his original statement in four out of the top five results. (The other is the original Washington Post story.)

So, you might ask: how on earth could this Capitol Hill staffer be unaware of this? I mean, wouldn’t you expect someone at the center of power would know the MOST BASIC INFORMATION about a gigantic war he helped start?

Well, you’ve obviously never constructed an all-encompassing fantasy world. It doesn’t matter if there are four pieces of evidence demonstrating the difference between your fantasy and reality. Or four hundred. Or four million. All you need is ONE piece of evidence saying that the world’s as you desire it to be. Once you’ve got that, everything else can be ignored forever.

Still, an important aspect of fantasy worlds is that it’s easier to maintain them when there are others inside with you. That way you can all swap stories about how the sky is green and rain falls up. “Did you hear?” you can say to your friend Kathryn Jean Lopez. “Even Human Rights Watch says the sky is green. And Amnesty International just admitted that rain falls up!” Then Kathryn will wander off and deliver this important information to the other fantasy world residents. Best of all, the others may eventually repeat this back to you, without you realizing you originated it. And so you will sleep well at night, certain in the knowledge the sky is green and rain falls up.

Then you will all live happily ever after, right up to the point you finally destroy America.

Herbert:

Sergeant Krause, who served with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, lives in a quiet middle-class subdivision not far from Fort Campbell, which is on the Tennessee-Kentucky border. Sprawled in his living room in jeans and a polo shirt, he seems happy. He’s safely home after serving three nerve-racking combat tours — one in Afghanistan and two yearlong tours in Iraq. He’s engaged to be married and will receive a degree soon from nearby Austin Peay State University. His commitment to the military, which he made while still in high school in Huntsville, Ala., will end in a few months.

But there is a definite edge in his voice, an undercurrent of bitterness, when he talks about the tiny percentage of the American population that is shouldering the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’re nowhere close to sharing the sacrifice,” he said. “And it should be shared, because it’s only in that sharing that society will truly care about what’s going on over there.

“Right now it’s such a small minority of families who have a stake in all of this. I hear people say things like, ‘We lost a lot of good people over there.’ I sort of snap around and say, ‘We? You didn’t lose anybody.’ You know what I mean?”

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 — Two months after a tumultuous Senate primary that was hailed as a watershed moment in American politics, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut appears to be comfortably ahead of his challenger Ned Lamont in their general election rematch.

Democrats here are convinced that Mr. Lieberman stands a good chance of returning to the Senate as an independent, and many have reassured him that he will not be stripped of his seniority if he wins, according to people in several Senate offices, who were granted anonymity to speak of the sensitive situation amid an intense political climate.

More.

Here’s one scenario: the Democrats win control of the Senate by a slim margin. Lieberman wins re-election, thanks in part to timid Democrats who are afraid to campaign against him. He then switches parties as a final “fuck you” to the party whose values he so clearly despises, handing control of the Senate right back over to the Republicans, and leaving the Democrats who promised him he could retain his seniority standing there like the chumps they are.

The Democrats have a nominee in this state. They should support him.

I’ll be joining in at the festivities for FAIR’s 20th anniversary celebration Thurday (tonight, by the time most of you read this) at Cooper Union. More details here.

From today’s AP wire:

During his run as a “Jeopardy!” contestant, Bob Harris learned that John Quincy Adams was the only president to later serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, that Lord Peter Wimsey is a fictional British sleuth and that mollusks include chitons, cowries and limpets.

But Harris’ game-show education also taught him that keeping your eye on the prize is what counts, and he’s not talking bundles of cash or a shiny new car — although he won both.

“People look at quiz shows and see the money and being on TV. Those are things that are very attractive and seem like the prizes. They’re not,” Harris said.

“Every single player I’ve spoken to has ultimately said that what they value is not the money but the memory. What they value is not how they played but who they met.”

Harris, who ascended to a $1 million Masters Tournament on the game show hosted by Alex Trebek, details his experiences in “Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!”, a book that is a combination of how-to primer, autobiography and musings on life and love.

Like “Jeopardy!” itself, it covers a lot of ground and in snappy and informative fashion.

Harris, 42, is a comedian, screenwriter, radio commentator and, in conversation, a man possessed of an easy wit (“At the top of my resume it should probably say `picaresque ne’er-do-well.’ Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of people hiring”).

The book is by turns serious and self-deprecating, touching and flip, but it doesn’t shortchange those looking for guidance on how to succeed at the trivia game show that was concocted by Merv Griffin in the 1960s and became a television staple.

For the uninitiated, “Jeopardy!” tests players’ knowledge in a variety of categories by presenting an answer and then giving each contestant a chance to quickly ring in with the appropriate question. It’s the game show that snobs can admit to watching.

“The purpose of the book, in any large way, is to walk the reader in the front door of `Jeopardy!’ and my 30s with the same questions I had: What’s big money like? How do I work this buzzer? What’s it like to be on TV?” Harris said in an interview.

“And by the end of the book I want readers to walk out the far door of `Jeopardy!’ and my 30s with the same question I wound up with myself, which is, `God, how is it possible that the world is filled with all this wonderful stuff and I never saw it before?'”