Childe Betrayus to the Dark Tower Came

Lots of interesting facts in one place today from the Project for an Old American Century.

A declaration of War with Iran has been passed.

By a vote 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.”

Of course, HHHillary was right on for it. Obama was courageously out of the room at vote time. So was the Maverick McCain. I knew they both reminded me of something.



Despite all that indignation at the suggestion of misdirection, the General Who Would Be Preznit seems to have gotten a few things mistaken.

Petraeus's casualty numbers were higher than the Pentagon's for the months preceding the surge and lower in the months following.

"Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian casualty numbers in the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq last week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional testimony. Petraeus's chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon combined the numbers of dead and wounded -- a figure that should be greater. Yet Petraeus's numbers were higher than the Pentagon's for the months preceding this year's increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations escalated this summer.

The charts are difficult to compare: Petraeus used monthly figures on a line graph, while the Pentagon computed "Average Daily Casualties" on a bar chart, and neither included actual numbers. But the numerical differences are still stark, and the reasons offered can be hard to parse. The Pentagon, in a written clarification, said that "Gen. Petraeus reported civilian deaths based on incidents reported by Coalition forces plus Iraqi government data. The [Pentagon] report only includes incidents reported by Coalition forces for civilian causality data."

But... the Pentagon's numbers are bigger. Strange, that. Nuance, one supposes. One must be correct about such things.