Archive for March, 2006

Noticed this pic at the DoD’s OIF Gallery:

03/17/06 – A U.S. Army Soldier on top an M2A2 Bradley fighting vehicle provides security during Operation Swarmer at Blocking Point 21 northeast of Samarra, Iraq, March 17, 2006.

That’s an M113, not an M2A2. So once again we see that even those that should know better don’t always get it right.

My issue with inaccuracies in media reports on the military isn’t with harmless errors like this. This error doesn’t change the message or the meaning of the story. I’m all for accuracy at all times, but in this case it doesn’t change anything. That isn’t always the case, though.

5-inch metal pin does $6.7 million in damage to Raptor

One night last October in the Utah desert, an Air Force mechanic double-checked the landing gear on a gleaming new F-22 Raptor fighter jet. It was five days into the Langley Air Force Base unit’s first training mission.

The mechanic spotted a 5-inch metal pin and an attached streamer fastened to the front landing gear. It needed to be removed before the plane could depart on its late-night mission.

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Last week I noted a very cool poster from History Shots detailing all the divisions in the US Army during the Second World War. At the time I posted this disclaimer:

NOTE: Murdoc has had no contact with History Shots. This isn’t an advertisement and I’m not being compensated in any way. But I’ll let them purchase a Blogad if they want…

Well, they bought a Blogad. I don’t know whether my post had anything to do with it or not, but I guess I should have written NOTE: Murdoc has had no contact with History Shots. This isn’t an advertisement and I’m not being compensated in any way. But I’ll let them pay off my mortgage if they want…

LOL. Anyway, the poster looks pretty cool and I encourage you to click on the ad at right and check it out if you haven’t already.

Just seen on MSNBC.com’s front page:

Click the link and you get:

Not exactly sure what the “editor” URL means. Pulled temporarily to make some adjustments? I don’t have time to look right now.

UPDATE: If you redo the URL to MSNBC.com’s standard format (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11973510) you get to the story. It’s an AP story.

UPDATE 2: The story is now live at the link and is unchanged from what I saw earlier. Weird, but probably just a bit of a timing issue.

Troops free three Western hostages in Iraq

US and British forces rescued three aid workers kidnapped in November:

British officials in Baghdad said those freed were Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32; and Briton Norman Kember, 74. The men — members of a Chicago-based Christian peace activist group — were kidnapped on Nov. 26 along with their American colleague, Tom Fox, 54, whose body was found earlier this month.

UPDATE: Here’s the Christian Peacemaker Teams official press release: CPTers Released.

“Released”? I do not think that word means what you think it means…

Stop the ACLU has more.

UPDATE 2: Call me cynically suspicious, but I’m a bit leery of the media reports on this incident. On MSNBC.com, for instance, it is front and center and headlined “DRAMATIC RESCUE”.

Why do I have a nagging fear that the operation maybe wasn’t quite as it is now being reported? Why do I fear that some in the media know this and are playing up the “dramatic rescue” bit just so they can pull the rug out from underneath the story when if/when the story changes? Why do I suspect that they would play up a heroic rescue mission today just to tear it apart tomorrow or next week or next year?

I hate being so jaded. But, sadly, I don’t think it’s totally unwarranted.

(For the record, I am not predicting that this is some sort of set up or deception. On anyone’s part. Just noting a potential angle here.)

UPDATE 3: The Jawa Report and Michelle Malkin have much, much more.

UPDATE (21 Feb 2007): No, the numbers for 2005 and 2006 are not here. I don’t think they’re publicly available yet. Just remember that combat deaths declined in both 2005 and 2006. I wrote more about the recent interest in this at Comparing the military death rates.

Instapundit points out this post at Red State which notes that the increase in the total number of deaths in the US military isn’t all that much greater under GW Bush than it was under the previous three (plus) Presidents. Here’s the gist:

Take a look at the actual US Military Casualty figures since 1980. If you do the math, you wil find quite a few surpises. First of all, let’s compare numbers of US Military personnel that died during the first term of the last four presidents.

George W. Bush . . . . . 5187 (2001-2004)
Bill Clinton . . . . . . . . . 4302 (1993-1996)
George H.W. Bush . . . . 6223 (1989-1992)
Ronald Reagan . . . . . . 9163 (1981-1984)

Even during the (per MSM) utopic peacetime of Bill Clinton’s term, we lost 4302 service personnel. H.W. Bush and Reagan actually lost significantly more personnel while never fighting an extensive war, much less a simulaltaneous war on two theaters (Iraq and Afghanistan). Even the dovish Carter lost more people duing his last year in office, in 1980 lost 2392, than W. has lost in any single year of his presidency. (2005 figures are not available but I would wager the numbers would be slightly higher than 2004.)

In 2004, more soldiers died outside of Iraq and Afghanistan than died inside these two war zones (900 in these zones, 987 outside these zones).

I’m guessing that total deaths in 2005 are probably about the same as 2004. 2004 saw 848 deaths in Iraq, 2005 saw 846.

This is, of course very informative and counter to nearly everything you hear on a daily basis, but don’t forget that the militaries under Carter, Reagan, and Bush I were significantly larger than today’s force. Of course, you could also make the argument that the gutting of the military under Clinton set the stage for too few “boots on the ground” in 2003 and beyond, which critics often claim is a contributing factor to the struggle to get the violence under control in the aftermath of the invasion.

But let’s not get all hyped up over this. Yes, things aren’t nearly as doomy and gloomy as Legacy Media tries to tell us, but we should know this already. Here’s a couple of charts I threw together to illustrate the numbers:

So while it’s true that fewer are dying under Bush II than under Reagan or Carter, that total only tells part of the story. But the fact that the death rate is comparable to that while Reagan was President is a bit surprising to me, as is the fact that even the death rate in 2004 (0.110%) was lower than that in 1980 (0.111%).

UPDATE (05 Sep 2006): The original link to the PDF is dead, so I changed it to a local copy of what I believe to be the same numbers. Hat tip to the reader who pointed out the problem.

UPDATE 2: Be sure to check out the latest discussion on this subject.

What a moron!

For what it’s worth, I’m just not buying this “sectarian violence” bit. I know that it all comes down to definitions, but if you don’t count the terrorist acts of foreign terrorists and the insurgency’s attacks on US and Coalition forces, you’re left with mostly either gang-like criminal violence or civil war. Not a Civil War. A civil war.

Iraqis loosely affiliated with one another are waging war on other Iraqis. Not a war with tanks and artillery (other than mortars) and one side doesn’t wear uniforms. But it is a war, albeit a “low intensity” guerrilla war. It’s more than just angry Sunnis attacking their Shiite neighbors and vice versa. The Iraqi army is heavily involved. The insurgency aims to overthrow the Iraqi government. Some are loyal to the previous government. I just don’t see how you can call it anything other than a civil war.

It’s easy to see why officials are hesitant to call it such, of course, as our friends the Legacy Media would trump it up as some sort of match point against Bush, immediately declare defeat (again), and many people who don’t know better would believe it (again). But the downside of pussy-footing around the “civil war” label is that you’re setting up those same people (the ones who don’t know better) with false expectations. While the situation in Iraq certainly isn’t anything approaching a truly full-scale Civil War or even an environment like the Vietnam war, it is rather grim at this point in time and will continue to be tenuous for years to come as Iraqis settle their differences.

To pretend otherwise today just makes tomorrow tougher to deal with.

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Sectarian violence sweeps Iraq, 51 killed
Attacks kill more than 1,000 in month since bombing of Shiite shrine

In other words, about a quarter less than we were all told had been killed on the first day after the bombing. Remember all the “1,300 dead” headlines? I never saw any major media organizations run any clarifications or corrections. I only saw the errors pointed out in blogs and such.

Now a month later they get to run their grim headlines once again.

UPDATE: A commenter points out that we’re not hearing anything about the average montlhy death toll among Iraqi civilians, and that’s a good point. According to the obviously-slanted Iraq Body Count web site, the range of reported deaths through March 12th is 33,710 – 37,832. Given that this is the third anniversary of the invasion, that comes to about 1,000 dead per month.

Unfortunately, the site doesn’t seem to make it easy to get monthly numbers, so it’s hard to compare this “1,000 dead in a month” headline to any previous months. It’s been my impression that casualties among Iraqi civilians have been holding steady or increasing over the past year, though I don’t know for sure. If that’s the case, it seems to me that this 1,000 in the past four weeks isn’t terribly out of line, though.

Does anyone know where we can get quasi-accurate monthly numbers to compare? We need some context to know if this number is particularly meaningful. 1,000 dead is terrible in any context, of course. But if we’re going to talk numbers we need more numbers.

Bush makes false claim about Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda

Found while looking for something else. You cannot make this stuff up.

I know it’s hard to believe Mr. President, but they have these things know that actually record what you say and are able to play back what they record. Even after a long period of time. Keith Olbermann supplies the evidence.

Video-WMP Video-QT (Longer clip coming)

Today in his speech in Cleveland:

Bush: “First-just if I might correct a misperception, I don’t think we ever said, at least I know I didn’t say that there was a direct connection between September 11th and Saddam Hussein.”

In days gone by-SOTU-three years ago:

Bush: “Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.”

Now-anyone listening and watching his speech back then would make that connection easily enough since al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11-don’t you think? Keith analyzes it very nicely.

This is from Crooks and Liars, which I think means that the other guys are crooks and liars. So why is the writer pretending that the first quote contradicts the second quote? He’s either being crooked, being a liar, or being ignorant.

This is what I run into time and time again when discussing the supposed reasons supposedly given before the invasion of Iraq. The critic of the invasion finds a quote that says something, makes some assumption or between-the-lines reading, and then pretends that the the assumption or reading between-the-lines is what was actually said. Then they bandy that about as some sort of proof of something or another, and like to play “gotcha” with some other half-imagined “quote” they picked up somewhere.

This is the apparent “logic” here:

1. Bush said Iraq was harboring members of Al Qaeda.
2. Al Qaeda perpetrated 9/11.
3. Therefore Bush said there is a direct connection between Iraq and 9/11.
4. If he says he didn’t ever say that, he’s a liar and loses double points.

I’m all for debating the issues, but let’s not act like three-year olds while doing it, okay?