Author: Payam

Marketplace: Let’s be objective about pulling out of Iraq

What is true is that the General Accountability Office has had an unassailable record as a disinterested assessor of the country’s affairs. The GAO is usually media shy for reasons that are well understood. They carry studies and investigations, and they release the results to the government and the public at large, and they let their findings speak for themselvs. This low-profile behavior is entirely consistent with the mission of a non-partisan body. This is why the GAO is venerated.

So, you know things are bad when the head of the GAO, the Comptroller General, feels the need to publicly warn against drawing any conclusions about how the Iraqi conflict is unraveling. It should be alarming when Mr. David Walker (our Comptroller General) asserts that we are dispensing with the process of gauging success altogether. In other words, although metrics exist for assessing the situation, the US government is either ignoring them or refusing to apply the metrics. Therefore, we cannot know whether what we are doing in Iraq will ever meet success.

Ignorance is bliss, as they say, but this bliss will be short-lived. As William Sloan Coffin said, “Hell is truth seen too late.” If we can measure our progress to success, then we can move forward confidently. If we insist on blindly working toward failure, then our standing as a global power will be lost forever. The former scenario is logical, essential. The latter scenario is unthinkable. Absent good metrics, as Mr. Walker states, we don’t know the scenario in which we live.

Is ignorance bliss?

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Shooting victims found in Baghdad

As the drumbeat of “staying the course” in Iraq and not “cutting and running” drowns out the voices of reality in Iraq, the daily calamities that befall the miserable masses of the cradle of modern civilization are erased from the minds of those who march willingly to this tune. Lost with the memories are reasons for pursuing the conflict further. Lost is compassion for people who die daily for a conflict that was not of their choosing. Lost is the sense of purpose that ought to drive our resolve.

At first American blood was to be shed for the purposes of democracy. Now it is being shed for the purpose of halting an increasingly hardened and horribly violent insurgency. When the Iraqi prime minister makes a formal visit to Ahmadinejad in Iran, Democracy is a perverse fantasy, and there is no victory to be claimed when the death toll from the insurgency rises daily.

The drums beat, the soldiers march, and the cradle of modern civilization is destroyed. Who is more pitiable? The Iraqis who die daily, or the inured soldiers who have no sight of the destination to which they charge?

Scientists OK Gore’s movie for accuracy – Yahoo! News

Will this end the frustrations of the scientists and activists who have dedicated entire careers to learn about the planet, about its climate and about man’s role as the sole steward of the environment?

With knowledge comes responsibility. Those who shun knowledge shun responsibility. Anyone who can understand this truth will understand the difference between George Bush and Al Gore (or any rational human being, for that matter.)

The Guardian blog has a poignant piece about the number of dead journalists in Iraq.
The fact of the matter from Guardian Unlimited: News blog

What is striking is that the number of dead journalists, 127, is lower than the number of British military casualties in Iraq, 113. This number, 113, is shockingly lower than the more than 2500 for the American military (at the time of the article’s writing). Hence, the number of British casualties is roughly 5% of the number of American casualties.

This may sound reasonable, but looking at some estimates of numbers–like this one in Washington Post National Weekly Edition–the number of British troops is roughly 10% of that of American troops. Hence, assuming that the number of contingents from each country has not changed much, the American casualty rate is about 2500/135000, or 1.8%, while the British rate is 113/10000, or 1.1%. This means that the British casualty rate is almost 40% lower.

Could this be because the British are administering more “peaceful” areas? Hardly. After all, Basra is hardly a calm place. Certainly, the American contingent is administering larger, more violent regions like Baghdad, but this alone cannot explain why the casualty rate is so much higher. American and British forces are partners in this campaign, but the British troops have not been targeted as avidly as the American troops. This is indubitably due to the fact that they have not committed as many stupid acts like Abu Ghraib to invite anger and violence.

It is possible that British troops are better equipped than their American counterparts. Rather, that they have armored vehicles at all.

National panel supports ’98 global warming evidence – The Boston Globe

Yes, yet another scientific panel has concluded that global warming is real and man made. Whether this will place pressure on politicians to speed up the glacial pace at which they address environmental issues is unknown.

The following graph, published in the Boston Globe, ought to relieve any doubts that people harbored about the reality of global warming. This single graph represents 10,000 years of data. It would be so nice for the doubters of global warming to produce a single graph that either corrects or contradicts this valuable graph.

From Mr. Fish at Harpers.org, the web adjunct to Harper’s Magazine

Well, said, or not said.