• Hot Off The Presses

    Just the Stats, Man

    Bush’s Refrain on Iraq Joined by a Smaller and Smaller Chorus To illustrate the progress in Iraq, Bush ticked off statistics on the Iraqi security forces (200 operations in two weeks), the number of Iraqi battalions (more than 130, covering 30,000 square miles), the number of tips (4,000 in December), the number of weapons caches and bomb plants found (1,800), and the amount spent to defeat improvised explosives ($3.3 billion). He declared that the Iraqi police academy “will include many, many more Sunnis.” Wait a minute. This is The Shotgun Approach. The strategery by which poorly prepared college or post-collegiate…

  • Blogs Wot I Read - Hot Off The Presses

    This American Life: Habeas Schmabeas

    BoingBoing’s Xeni Jardin gets around, finally, to making this observation: “We are being lied to.” Yep, we sure are. Finally, several days after I first heard part but not all of it, here is the link to This American Life’s Guantanamo report, “Habeas Schmabeas.” This is the one where part of it, in explanation of the origin of the legal concept of habeas corpus, entails a visit to Westminster Abbey. I was wrong about the guide, his name is Tony, and thus is not the same one we had when we visited the Abbey year before last. And remember, the…

  • Blogs Wot I Read

    I Am A Liberal Too

    Huffington Post, that haven for lefty slebs, has a new blogger, and I say “Right on, right on, see you at the barricades.” The Blog | George Clooney: I Am a Liberal. There, I Said It! | The Huffington Post The fear of (being) criticized can be paralyzing. Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it drives me…