Past Peak: April 2007 Archives

Today's Gumpagraph. Kent is 'Gumpa' to his grandson Sebastian.

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Today's Bush Joke

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. Do you know what would happen if Cheney was impeached? George Bush would become acting president. — Jay Leno

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April 27, 2007

Kristol Gets Nailed

Iraq

Chickenhawk William Kristol gets a good talking to by an articulate, pissed-off military wife. Worth a listen.

[Thanks, Clay]

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Unevolved

Extremism Politics Religion Science/Technology

This is disheartening, putting it mildly. The graph below shows public acceptance of human evolution in 2005. You'll find the US at second-to-last.

From National Geographic's description:

Adults were asked to respond to the statement: "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals." The percentage of respondents who believed this to be true is marked in blue; those who believed it to be false, in red; and those who were not sure, in yellow.
A study of several such surveys taken since 1985 has found that the United States ranks next to last in acceptance of evolution theory among nations polled. Researchers point out that the number of Americans who are uncertain about the theory's validity has increased over the past 20 years. [Emphasis added]

Note that the question was just whether humans evolved from earlier animals. It said nothing about evolution being by purely natural means, via natural selection, or without participation by a deity. It's just: "did humans evolve?"

It would be hard to overstate how clueless you have to be to say no.

The study also found — no surprise here — that evolution deniers in the US tend to be Republicans:

The team found that individuals with anti-abortion, pro-life views associated with the conservative wing of the Republican Party were significantly more likely to reject evolution than people with pro-choice views.
The team adds that in Europe having pro-life or right-wing political views had little correlation with a person's attitude toward evolution.

The researchers say this reflects the politicization of the evolution issue in the U.S. "in a manner never seen in Europe or Japan."

"In the second half of the 20th century, the conservative wing of the Republican Party has adopted creationism as part of a platform designed to consolidate their support in Southern and Midwestern states," the study authors write.

Miller says that when Ronald Reagan was running for President of the U.S., for example, he gave speeches in these states where he would slip in the sentence, "I have no chimpanzees in my family," poking fun at the idea that apes could be the ancestors of humans. [Emphasis added]

It would be funny, in a sick sort of way, if it weren't so downright scary, considering the belligerence and military power of the US. People who have flipped the mental switch that lets them ignore the evidence of physical reality so they can be accepted by the herd are people who can be led into all sorts of mischief. And they're armed to the teeth. Superstitious primates with guns.

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Friday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

President Bush sent out an e-mail today asking people to send money to the Republican Party. How come those e-mails never get deleted? — Jay Leno

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April 26, 2007

Disintegrating Iraq

Iraq

Iraqi blogger Riverbend, writing about the wall that's being built around a "Sunni" area in Baghdad, and about the wreckage that is Iraq today. It's heart-breaking:

The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look — we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here — it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.
The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently — Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer — like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas".

I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.

I remember Baghdad before the war — one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were — we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it — depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively because, it was just a preposterous idea — leaving ones home and extended family — leaving ones country — and to what? To where? [...]

So we've been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees — the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare — stay and wait and try to survive. [...]

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends... And to what? [Emphasis added]

There may have been people in the White House and the Pentagon who actually believed that US troops would be greeted as liberators and accepted as the new de facto rulers of Iraq. Or maybe the game plan has always been to create such chaos that Iraqis would eventually demand partition of their own country. Or — perhaps most likely — both, with various factions working at cross-purposes. In any case, I think we need vehemently to resist the notion that if only the US had done this or that thing differently — short of immediately pulling out after the fall of Saddam, something that was never in the cards, just look at the enormous US embassy under construction in Baghdad — it all could have ended well. There isn't some "right" way to invade and occupy a nation of people who do not want you there. The problem isn't that the invasion was done wrong. The problem is that the invasion was done at all. And every day that US troops remain in Iraq, the failure and the unimaginable suffering only deepen.

The US has so much to answer for. If we don't redeem ourselves soon — assuming that redemption is still even possible — it seems inescapable that, one way or another, the US will pay a dark and heavy price. Call it karma, cause and effect. Or call it justice.

[Thanks, Miles]

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Thursday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

I got myself a new computer this week. I got the Alberto Gonzales Dell computer. Have you seen this one? It destroys your e-mails and has no memory. Almost everybody in Washington is still calling for Gonzales to resign. President Bush said Gonzales' testimony last week increased his confidence in him. Bush said he had no idea Gonzales could lie like that. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 25, 2007

What Will It Take?

Great rant from Bill Maher:

Here's a quote from Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Well, guess what? The bees are disappearing. In massive numbers. All around the world. And if you think I'm being alarmist and that, "Oh, they'll figure out some way to pollinate the plants..." No, they've tried. For a lot of what we eat, only bees work. And they're not working. They're gone. It's called Colony Collapse Disorder, when the hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, and all that's left are a few queens and some immature workers...
But I think we're the ones suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder. Because although nobody really knows for sure what's killing the bees, it's not al-Qaeda, and it's not God doing some of his Old Testament shtick, and it's not Winnie the Pooh. It's us. It could be from pesticides, or genetically modified food, or global warming, or the high-fructose corn syrup we started to feed them. Recently it was discovered that bees won't fly near cell phones &mdash the electromagnetic signals they emit might screw up the bees navigation system, knocking them out of the sky. So thanks guy in line at Starbucks, you just killed us. It's nature's way of saying, "Can you hear me now?"

Last week I asked: If it solved global warming, would you give up the TV remote and go back to carting your fat ass over to the television set every time you wanted to change the channel. If that was the case in America, I think Americans would watch one channel forever. If it comes down to the cell phone vs. the bee, will we choose to literally blather ourselves to death? Will we continue to tell ourselves that we don't have to solve environmental problems — we can just adapt: build sea walls instead of stopping the ice caps from melting. Don't save the creatures of the earth and oceans, just learn to eat the slime and jellyfish that nothing can kill, like Chinese restaurants are already doing.

Maybe you don't need to talk on your cell phone all the time. Maybe you don't need a bag when you buy a keychain. Americans throw out 100 billion plastic bags a year, and they all take a thousand years to decompose. Your children's children's children's children will never know you but they'll know you once bought batteries at the 99 cent store because the bag will still be caught in the tree. Except there won't be trees. Sunday is Earth Day. Please educate someone about the birds and the bees, because without bees, humans become the canary in the coal mine, and we make bad canaries because we're already such sheep. [Emphasis added]

We can't continue to take the path of least resistance. Our future depends on it.

Greed kills. That includes greed for comfort and convenience.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:44 PM | Comments (4) | Link to this

Tesla Motors

Energy Science/Technology

Vanity Fair has a long feature article on Tesla Motors, maker of the world's coolest electric car:

There is no engine noise, because it is a 100 percent electric car—only an eerie whine of gears as the car accelerates. We turn onto an entrance ramp for Route 101 South. And then comes the money moment. Luk floors the accelerator, and the Roadster jumps forward so fast—as instantaneously as its inverter can send electricity to the motor that turns its wheels—that I'm pinned against that hard-shell seat. Zero to 60 in four seconds is Tesla's claim—faster than all but a few high-performance, gas-powered racecars—with a top speed of 135 miles per hour and a range of 250 miles. It's pretty cool.

Whoa.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:41 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

DST And AGW

Too funny. I sure hope it's satire.

[Thanks, Kevan]

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Wednesday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

Reviews of Gonzales' performance were mixed. 99.99% of the people who saw it felt he embarrassed himself. The other .01% was this guy [on screen: Pres. Bush]. — Jon Stewart, on Alberto Gonzales' Senate testimony

It's so hard to follow. That is exactly why the president was so impressed. Legally, Gonzales had to appear before Congress, so his choice was either to expose the administration's political machinations, or appear to be a functioning pinhead. He went with pinhead. And if I may say — nailed it. — Daily Show correspondent John Oliver

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April 24, 2007

Tuesday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

Really, President Bush? You think the Gonzales testimony went well? Which part? Because the best thing anyone can say about Gonzales' testimony was that he didn't use the word "nappy," and he remembered to wear pants. — Amy Poehler

Posted by Jonathan at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 23, 2007

Kucinich To Announce Impeachment Bill Tomorrow

Politics

Pandagon:

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will hold a news conference tomorrow afternoon to announce the introduction of articles of impeachment against Vice-President of the United States Richard B. Cheney.

A start. It'll be interesting to see Kucinich's particulars.

I don't believe Kucinich does this kind of stuff to get on the tv. I think he believes in it. So do I. Impeachment needs to get on the table. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and this White House passed it long ago. It's a Republic, if we can keep it, and impeachment is one of the tools. It's the firewall. That's what it's for.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:05 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Plastic

Good news, bad news.

The bad news: Americans are clueless about plastic, according to a national survey (BusinessWire, via Crpytogon):

72% of respondents do not know that plastic is made out of oil/petroleum
On average, respondents estimated 38% of plastic is recycled (the reality is less than 6%, according to the EPA)
Nearly 40% (38.1%) of respondents said plastic will biodegrade underground, in home compost, in landfills, or in the ocean (plastic will not biodegrade in any of these environments).

The good news: once they learned how wrong they were, they said they'd be willing to pay more for a natural, biodegradable plastic:

After learning that plastic is made from oil and never biodegrades, half (50.1%) of respondents stated they would be likely or very likely to pay 5-10% more for a natural, biodegradable plastic. Only 24% were unlikely/very unlikely to pay this much more.

Demonstrating the utter importance of education on these issues. More and more, people want to do the right thing. They just don't have an accurate picture of where things stand and what needs to be done. Imagine if there were effective, principled national leadership on these issues, instead of its opposite.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Dawkins On O'Reilly

Religion

Richard Dawkins went on Bill O'Reilly's show tonight on Fox. Video here.

I was hoping for a longer segment with a little more substance. Silly me. O'Reilly was actually civil, maybe because he knew he was completely overmatched. But still, the inane non sequiturs that come out of O'Reilly's mouth...

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Monday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

After weeks of mock testimony, there you have it. Alberto Gonzales doesn't know what happened, but he assures you, what he doesn't remember was handled properly. — Jon Stewart

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April 21, 2007

The Nightmare Of Socialized Medicine

Social Security

Jerome-a-Paris tells the story of his family's experience with French socialized medicine. His two-and-a-half year old son had a brain tumor. Here's the story. Americans, eat your hearts out:

[My son] was first diagnosed by our pediatrician, a private sector doctor, who sent us to the (public) specialised pediatric hospital in Paris for additional exams. We did a scan and a MRI the same day, and that brought the diagnosis we know. He was hospitalised the same day, with surgery immediately scheduled for two days later. At that point, we only had to provide our social security number.
Surgery [was performed by] one of the world's top specialists in his field...After a few days at the hospital, we went home. At that point, we had spent no money, and done little more than filling up a simple form with name and social security number.

Meetings with the doctor in charge of his long term treatment, and with a specialised re-education hospital, were immediately set up, and chemiotherapy and physical therapy were scheduled for the next full year.

Physical therapy included a few hours each day in a specialised hospital, with a varied team of specialists (kinesitherapy, ergotherapy, phychologist, orthophonist) and, had we needed it, schooling. As we lived not too far away, we tried to keep our son at his pre-school for half the day, and at the hospital the other half. Again, apart from filling up a few forms, we had nothing to do.

My wife pretty much stopped working to take my son to the hospital every day (either for reeducation or treatment) - and was allocated a stipend by the government as caregiver, for a full year (equal to just under the minimum wage). Had we needed it, transport by ambulance would have been taken care of, free of charge for us (as it were, car commutes to the hospital could also be reimbursed).

During the chemiotherapy, if he had any side effects (his immune system being weakened, any normal children's disease basically required him to be hospitalised to be given full anti-biotic treatment), we'd call up the hospital and just come around. Either of us could spend the night with him as needed. We never spent a dime.

After a year at the specialised hospital, ongoing re-education was moved to another institution specialised in home and school interventions. In practice, a full team of 5 doctors or specialists come to see him over the week, either at home or at school, to continue his treatment (such follow up, possibly less intense than at the beginning, will be needed until he reaches his adult size). Of course, they manufacture braces and other specialised equipment for him and provide it free of charge to us.

Check up exams take place every 3 months, with all the appropriate exams (usually including a MRI), and we've never had to wait for the appointments. Again, no cost for us, no funds to be fronted.

When he relapsed, our doctors considered all available options. In the end, the most promising technology was in another Paris hospital. Such technology, linked to nuclear research, exists only in 3 places in the world, one in Boston and one in Switzerland, so the French system itself was able to provide a cutting edge option. But had we needed to go to Germany, the UK or even the USA for treatment because that's where the best hope was, the costs of that would have been covered too by French social security.

Now that our son is in first grade, he has the right to special help for handicapped children at school (a fairly recent law), and he now benefits from part time help - a person who is around about 20 hours per week to help him do his work and catch up when he is absent for his therapy. This is paid by the city of Paris and the ministry of education. [...]

So, we did not have to spend a single cent. We got support to be available for him. He gets top notch treatment. We never had to wait for anything. And this is available to absolutely everybody in France, irrespective of your job, age or family situation. If you are badly sick or injured, you simply do not have to worry about money at any time, nor about lack of care. [Emphasis added]

Whenever the local NPR station carries a discussion of single-payer health care systems, there's always some belligerent guy (it's always a guy) who calls in and goes on about the how the US has "the greatest health care system in the world." It never fails. So clueless.

Pass the Freedom Fries.

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Glub Glub

If global warming causes sea levels to rise significantly, how will world coastlines be affected? The USGS has animated maps (via Policy Pete) showing the effect at different levels of increase.

Hey, who needed Florida?

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Saturday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

Today on Capitol Hill, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales raised his right hand, swore to tell the truth, and then had a good laugh. He testified that he had nothing to hide. Well, not anymore — he deleted everything. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 08:19 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 20, 2007

The Failure Of Iraqification

Iraq

The Iraqification of the war — Iraqi troops "standing up" so US troops can "stand down" — has always been an absurdly impossible dream. Never happen. McClatchy Newspapers say the Pentagon's finally facing up to that fact, but unfortunately it's replacing it with an even more impossible dream: US troops single-handedly defeating the insurgents and gaining control of Iraq. Never happen. Excerpts:

Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.
Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.

But evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the policy shift publicly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made no public mention of training Iraqi troops on Thursday during a visit to Iraq. [...]

Maj. Gen. Doug Lute, the director of operations at U.S. Central Command, which oversees military activities in the Middle East, said that during the troop increase, U.S. officers will be trying to determine how ready Iraqi forces are to assume control.

"We are looking for indicators where we can assess the extent to which we are fighting alongside Iraqi security forces, not as a replacement to them," he said. Those signs will include "things like the number of U.S.-only missions, the number of combined U.S.-Iraqi missions, the number where Iraqis are in the lead, the number of Joint Security Stations set up," he said.

That's a far cry from the optimistic assessments U.S. commanders offered throughout 2006 about the impact of training Iraqis.

President Bush first announced the training strategy in the summer of 2005.

"Our strategy can be summed up this way," Bush said. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." [...]

Throughout 2006, Casey and top Bush administration leaders touted the training as a success, asserting that eight of Iraq's 10 divisions had taken the lead in confronting insurgents. [...]

[But] in nearly every area where Iraqi forces were given control, the security situation rapidly deteriorated. The exceptions were areas dominated largely by one sect and policed by members of that sect.

In the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, which Bush celebrated last year as an example of success, suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents set off a bomb last month that killed as many as 150 people, the largest single bombing attack of the war. Shiite Muslim mobs, including some police officers, pulled Sunnis from their homes and executed dozens afterward. U.S. troops were dispatched to restore order.

Earlier this month, U.S. forces engaged in heavy fighting in the southern city of Diwaniyah after Iraqi forces, who'd been given control of the region in January 2006, lost control of the city.

U.S. officials said they once believed that if they empowered their Iraqi counterparts, they'd take the lead and do a better job of curtailing the violence. But they concede that's no longer their operating principle. [...]

Many officials are vague about when the U.S. will know when troops can begin to return home. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. is trying to buy "time for the Iraqi government to provide the good governance and the economic activity that's required."

One State Department official, who also asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, expressed the same sentiment in blunter terms. "Our strategy now is to basically hold on and wait for the Iraqis to do something," he said. [Emphasis added]

This is what the surge is about: US troops shouldering aside the Iraqis. But we've seen this movie before, in Vietnam. There are plenty of differences between Iraq and Vietnam, but some things haven't changed. Once again, we see a succession of increasingly desperate plans, each touted as the answer, the one that will turn things around, and each diverging farther and farther from reality. Can-do planners see US "credibility" as being on the line, so they keep upping the ante — and sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand. No general or politician wants to be the one to say it can't be done. They've got their egos and careers to consider. But it's Iraqis who pay the awful price.

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Friday Gumpagraph

Posted by Jonathan at 09:57 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

Because of the storms back East, over 250,000 people still without power. In fact, it was so bad in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had to resort to destroying e-mails by hand. — Jay Leno

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April 19, 2007

Tigers Headed For Extinction

Independent:

Hope is fading in the fight to save the tiger in India, the animal's last stronghold, according to Indian conservationists. Resurgent poaching and feeble official protection have combined to put the animal, India's national symbol, on the road to extinction, say the country's leading tiger experts...
Tiger numbers, which officially stand at nearly 4,000, are rapidly falling and may actually have dropped below 1,200, says Valmik Thapar, the conservationist who is the Indian tiger's best known champion. "I think we are living with the last tigers of India," he tells the BBC2 documentary, Battle To Save The Tiger.

The disappearance of India's wild tigers — one of the world's most charismatic animal species — would mark one of the most sinister milestones yet in the history of the degradation of the earth's environment by people. [Emphasis added]

Shame on us all.

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~~War Czar~~ Execution Manager

Humor & Fun Iraq

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Good For The American People

Politics

USA Today (via Atrios):

While Congress and the White House remain divided over what to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the USA, a new poll shows the American public appears to have reached a consensus on the question.
A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken last weekend found that 78% of respondents feel people now in the country illegally should be given a chance at citizenship. [...]

But many conservatives strongly oppose to putting illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship. "You'd be rewarding them for breaking our laws," said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif. [Emphasis added]

Just one more example (alongside Iraq, institutionalized torture, illegal wiretaps, denial of global warming, etc., etc.) of how far out of the mainstream American conservatives really are — though you'd never know it from watching tv.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:05 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

"Bomb, Bomb, Bomb..."

Iran Politics

Un-freaking-believable.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Thursday Gumpagraph

Posted by Jonathan at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

The Bush administration on Wednesday extended the tours of Army troops in Iraq by three months, increasing their stay to a total of 15 months. Troops responded to the news, saying, "I'm gay." — Amy Poehler

Posted by Jonathan at 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 18, 2007

Loan Wolf

Humor & Fun Iraq Politics

A great Jon Stewart bit on Paul Wolfowitz:

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Today In Baghdad

Iraq

Violence in Baghdad Wednesday "killed at least 171 people and wounded scores" (CNN).

That's many times the death toll at Virginia Tech. The people of Iraq endure that every day. Day in, day out. Year in, year out. Because of the US.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:03 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Quote For Today

Quotes

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap. — Kurt Vonnegut

Posted by Jonathan at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Wednesday Gumpagraph

Posted by Jonathan at 10:16 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

The White House said today that they have lost the e-mails requested by congressional investigators, e-mails that may have dealt with the firing of those eight federal prosecutors. They lost them. Today the administration assured Americans that they are not corrupt, just incompetent. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 10:13 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

April 17, 2007

From Bad To Worse

Iraq

Iraq is going from bad to worse. First, the casualty rate among US troops is accelerating. Miami Herald:

Over the past six months, American troops have died in Iraq at the highest rate since the war began, an indication that the conflict is becoming increasingly dangerous for U.S. forces even after more than four years of fighting.
From October 2006 through last month, 532 American soldiers were killed, the most during any six-month period of the war. March also marked the first time that the U.S. military suffered four straight months of 80 or more fatalities. April, with 58 service members killed through Monday, is on pace to be one of the deadliest months of the conflict for American forces.

Senior American military officials attribute much of the increase to the Baghdad security crackdown, now in its third month. But the rate of fatalities was increasing even before a more aggressive strategy began moving U.S. troops from heavily fortified bases into smaller neighborhood outposts throughout the capital, placing them at greater risk of roadside bombings and small-arms attacks. [Emphasis added]

And the chaos is spreading outward from Iraq. James Zogby:

With the discovery of an Al Qaida cell in Morocco, and deadly suicide terrorist attacks in Algiers and the National Parliament in Baghdad, it is now clear that Bin Laden's cancerous group has metastasised, spawning affiliates and copy-cat groups across the region. What is also clear is that war in Iraq is aggravating this growth in two other ways.
On the one hand, the war itself, the occupation and the behaviour associated with it, have fuelled extremism. Of equally deadly consequence is the fact that Iraq is now playing the role once reserved for Afghanistan. Reports coming out of Morocco and Algeria, establish that hundreds of young men from both countries have travelled to Iraq for training and combat, and have returned to their home countries with evil intent. [...]

In Iraq, demonstrations led by Moqtada Al Sadr brought out hundreds of thousands of Iraqis calling for an end to the US presence in their country. In a surprising display of unity in Najaf, Sunni and Shiite clerics walked together, in the mass mobilisation. This outpouring came in response to Al Sadr's call to all Iraqis to cease fighting each other in sectarian attacks and to unite around a single cause: ending the United States' 'occupation' of Iraq. A possible contributing factor to this display of unity may be found in a US Pentagon report noting that casualties in Iraq have actually increased since the beginning of the Bush Administration's 'surge'. While it is true that violence has decreased in Baghdad, it is more than offset by killings in the rest of Iraq as insurgents and sectarian terrorists have dispersed to other locations.

But, Baghdad is still not safe, as was made clear on Thursday when a suicide bomber penetrated multiple layers of security to detonate his bomb in the cafeteria of the Iraqi Parliament building. All of this directly challenged the notion that the 'surge' is working. In Afghanistan things are no better; Taliban attacks are up, as are Nato casualties. A recent report by a former US army general claims that much of Afghanistan has reverted into a lawless narco-state. [Emphasis added]

An Iraqi group said to be linked to al-Qaeda says that Iraq has become a "university of terrorism." Irish Times:

The head of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq said the country had become a "university of terrorism", producing highly qualified warriors, since the 2003 US-led invasion.
In an audio recording posted on the Internet today, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, said his fighters were successfully confronting US forces in Iraq and have begun producing a guided missile called al-Quds 1 or Jerusalem 1.

"The largest batch of soldiers for jihad ... in the history of Iraq are graduating and they have the highest level of competence in the world," Baghdadi said. [...]

"We would like to inform the mujahideen all over the world, and especially in Iraq, that the Quds (Jerusalem) 1 rocket has gone into the phase of military production," Baghdadi said, adding that its length, weight, range and precision "matches those of world powers". [...]

"The fear of the American Marines has disappeared from the hearts of the people of the world, as the mujahideen have become thousands from the few they were after the fall of the infidel Baath regime," Baghdadi said. "These are just some of the achievements of four years of jihad." [Emphasis added]

I hate to think about where this is all heading, but it's hard to see any way that it doesn't become a whole lot worse before it gets any better. All the King's horses and all the King's men (what horses and men the King has left) can't put this Humpty-Dumpty together again.

Failed states don't spontaneously recover, and chaos only breeds more chaos in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. The Soviet Union once seemed impregnable; then it got tied down in Afghanistan, and things unravelled quite suddenly and unexpectedly. It's hard to imagine the US imploding the way the Soviets did, but we sure seem determined to follow in their footsteps. The USSR seemed stable and secure — until it wasn't anymore. Chaotic, nonlinear systems can shift to new equilibrium states quite suddenly and unexpectedly. The pace of change is accelerating; nothing lasts forever.

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Tuesday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke