You Can Bet On It

This morning's been moderately busy, and I also took the time to scan the usual sources, plus a diversion to the Science Times for an interesting piece about, well, time.

One thing I noticed on my scan was that you can always count on seeing a headline using the following two words: Iraq Violence. To make a crude pun on the paragraph above, it's almost like you can set your watch to it.

Today's look at Iraq Violence begins with a "helicopter crash" north of Baghdad--crash being an interesting choice of term--yes, it crashed, apparently after it was obliterated by a missile. In other words, crash is technically correct, although it might be better termed "crashed after being shot down." The Guardian goes on to note the following (and, hell, I had to start a tally sheet to make sure I didn't miss anything):

Two suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad, resulting in six deaths and 18 injuries.
Three suicide bomb attacks in Mosul, 33 dead (no reports of wounded).
18 dead in other attacks across Iraq.
A total of at least 1,338 deaths since April.

In other words, evidently the "violent" version of "last throes."

Now, it takes a special sort of person to turn this sort of shit into something vaguely resembling shinola...and, last night, after cooking/eating, I was treated to the latest attempt in the personages of Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. George Casey--the latter showing that the laws of physics are bendable, at least when it comes to defining "success:"

But there appears to be a perception that today, and in fact, over the last two months, that the violence is out of control, that it far exceeds any levels that we've seen before. That's just not the case. In fact, over the last seven weeks, we've ranged between 450 and 500 attacks over the course of a week. In August in Najaf, in November around Ramadan in Fallujah, and then for the elections there were 700, 800, 900 attacks over the course of a week.

Gen. Casey should be an author--he could write the travelogue Iraq on 70 Attacks a Day.

Rumsfeld, by the way, flopped around like a limp dishrag, first admitting, then denying that the US was/is negotiating with the Iraqi resistance, before finally settling on the non-persistance of memory defense:

I don't know anything about specific meetings on specific days.

He also suggested "Sunni leader" as the acceptable alternative to "insurgent leader," while Gen. Casey proffered "local and tribal leaders."

Elsewhere, press reports note that Team Bush is getting desperate, calling on the only genuine partner in the Coalition of whatever the hell they're calling it these days to help--in BOTH wars:

BRITAIN is coming under sustained pressure from American military chiefs to keep thousands of troops in Iraq - while going ahead with plans to boost the front line against a return to "civil war" in Afghanistan.

Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster - more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month...

"The Prime Minister was given a pretty depressing run-down of the prognosis for Iraq while he was in Washington," one senior Ministry of Defence source said last night. "The Americans are pushing for at least a maintenance of the troop numbers we have there now. Our latest intention is to reduce by at least half the number of our troops in Iraq within a year.

"It's difficult to see how we can square that circle."

(Link courtesy of Steve Gilliard).

And, while on the subject of Britain, let's note for the record that the WaPo evidently opted for a "better late than never" attitude towards the Downing Street Memo--nice to see that this damning bit of evidence finally is getting looked at by the spineless media.

Oh, and in case anyone forgot, the Cheerleader in Chief is scheduled to deliver his own reality defying pronouncement this evening, tentatively themed "Clear Path to Victory," which seems about as likely as time travel (I dunno--maybe Bush will announce that wormholes are a reality, and he plans to step back in time to try again--to LAND the plane on the aircraft carrier...Flight Suit Redux). Tomorrow the analysts will parse the language of the speech, and, like the courtiers in The Emperor's New Clothes, fail to notice the utter emptyness compared to the reality in Iraq.

Which a different section of the paper will cover--probably with a headline like:

Violence Continues in Iraq