In Mr. Bush's world refusing to inform the public means that none of it really happened. Not a new form of behavior for him but increasingly dangerous. It goes deeper than denial. For him, if he chooses there are things that just don't exist. For whatever reasons he go unchallenged.

Right. The Pentagon has released the same categories of figures for years, and now decides the same data is classified for those months around the election.

Just another form of deceit.

You have to use the Rule of Inverse Totalities - or, if Bush says it's raining, believe that it's sunny, and vice-versa. So if Bush & Co. are poo-pooing casualty reports, believe that the blood was running thick and constant, and that if it got out, people would go frigging berserk.

In Bushworld, nothing to see here = you ONLY want to be looking fucking HERE.

The people of this nation, who ostensibly the government answers to, need to be and have a right to be informed. I suspect the election had something to do with the months that data was not provided. The September and October data, which is the most current, would have allowed for voters to gauge the state of things in Iraq. Bush, for political reasons, decided that the data wasn't good for the Republican cause and suppressed it. What oath of office?

I claim that deaths are more meaningful than attacks because attacks vary enormously in their size and competence. In 2004 the enemy was able to hold on to cities (e.g., Falluja), and overrun and massacre Iraqi police stations. Now they're not; indeed, they have given up on almost all mass action, and most attacks appear to be the act of 1 to 3-man teams (IEDs, suicide cars or VBIEDs, and snipers). It is not clear to me that 10 such small attacks are 10 times worse (indeed, any worse) than one attack by a 30-man force.

We should expect nothing else; so long as congress after congress relinquish their reasponsibility and allow presidents to become mini dictators.
When all else fails, break out the Constitution.

If you don't have any good news to report then don't report it!!!!!

The worse it gets, the more they will suppress information and skew fact. Until they are stopped.

Will the Dems find a spine in the senate?

Will the press allow the dems to have a spine in the house?

Stay tuned...

I don't have the reporting resources to confirm this, and the MSM is asleep, but here's the scenario I imagine: Coalition casualties have been down because we're hunkering down into force protection. This is why the insurgents have started kidnapping in addition to killing; they want to draw us out into search missions where we're vulnerable to their attacks.

Kidnapping also may mean that they are confident enough of their own security to actually hold hostages. Or it could mean that they're just taking the hostages to another location for killing.

Maybe Bush's handlers don't want to embarass him by the inevitable comparison that will be made by contrasting his statement in October that "Absolutely, we're winning" with stats that show just the opposite.

I more than agree that Iraq is nasty and deadly, but I think it has the potential to end up as a mere side show to the REAL threat.

Seems to me the greater long-term danger is just south of the border and the true nature of that threat is not even mentioned in the public debate so far as I can tell.

For decades our country has winked at illegal Hispanic workers and made money off their sweat. Now we are engaged in smacking them up against the wall in a faux show of force to belatedly try to prove that our laws have teeth.(Which they don't.)

As someone who was raised in the potato, mellon and cotton fields of the southwest working along side these good people (sweating)I can tell you that the vast majority of those I have known are good and decent, humble to a fault, and in general a tremendous asset.

Doing an about face now and violently snatching them off the streets destroys families, many of whom have kids who are US-born and thus citizens. My fear is that we are about to create a NEW batch of terror for ourselves when we alienate these American kids.

It seems that the only answer we can come up with as a country is WAR. War on terrorism, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on...fill in the blank. None of it works.

Even if we don't want to, we have to have some kind of an amnesty and guest worker program. Otherwise, we're going to turn our helpers into our enemies.

And yes, I know it's illegal. And yes, I know it costs us all in welfare and medical services. And all the rest. I don't like it any more than the next guy.

But imagine the consequences of a whole generation of truly alienated American kids with a serious grudge against the government.

In my view, THIS is the elephant in the room. THIS is where the most substantial threat lies. A wall along the border is simply another Maginot Line and will prove to be just about as effective.

This is a large, but still-manageable problem now. Keep blasting away at it instead of coming up with a rational compromise that faces the facts and it will become a monster.

You cannot spackle a wall with a shotgun.

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