What those little things you 'don't know' about of Iraq don't tell you

Now, in my wanderings around the net I do run into the nasty and defeatist folks from the 'reality based community'... they just don't seem to like this reality and wish, as in the words of Adam Savage from Mythbusters, to substitute their own. The methodology is clear and simple: use factoids, fact snippets or bald assertions and purport them to coalesce into something else. Very simple to do, really, much simpler than contextual analysis of a situation, seeing what the causational factors are and then trying to fit those factors into the larger sweep of events. By picking and choosing amongst facts and figures, one can present a constellation of things that look to represent one thing... but turn out to be pin-holes on a piece of paper and the pinpoint holes offering constricted view of a broader set of events and happenings. Case in point is the article at Informationclearinghouse about the 7 Facts You Might Not Know about Iraq by Michael Schwartz. Needless to say the site itself is ideologically oriented, agenda driven and doing its best to report 'facts' in their own way.

As my Uncle Joe used to say: Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure.

So let me add a bit of depth to the reported facts and see what we find out.

1) The Iraqi Government Is Little More Than a Group of "Talking Heads"

Oh, my! This individual has obviously not watched C-SPAN and the hours devoted to pure bloviation by the US Congress to empty seats during off-hours. And how does this individual back this up? Well the first sentence gives a clear indication of what this individual would LIKE to see:

A minimally viable central government is built on at least three foundations: the coercive capacity to maintain order, an administrative apparatus that can deliver government services and directives to society, and the resources to manage these functions.

So, you cannot have distributed Government in a Nation, apparently. And the Central Government must have the coercive capacity to maintain order! That means that the entire US Constitution is out of order, here, as it places the sole Right to determine how order is made to The People. So the United States, by declaring laws, put standards and guidelines down as to how law enforcement should act and what they can and cannot do and holding them accountable for their ACTIONS is, in fact, endowing these folks to keep order and unruliness to a dull roar via the will of The People. Truly, I do not see jackbooted Government military agents striding up and down the streets of the cities of the United States, nor any other form of coercive behavior mandating that people should maintain order. We look at it differently in that the will of the People *sets* what is and is not orderly and ask enforcement officers who are constrained by those same rules to 'keep the peace'.

Well, not even done with the first SENTENCE and already I have problems on this individual's view of Government. At a guess I would say that this individual is wholly unsatisfied with the United States for not even offering that 'minimum of government'.

Now, for government services being offered. How very Socialist of this individual to want the Government to deliver things to the People! And Individuals are to be lumped in to the entire society, so that any failure for any one segment or any one small piece can serve as an indictment of the whole of Government. This outlook of the Government *delivering* services points to an outlook that is, again, wholly out of line with the Constitution and how a Government may run in a non-authoritarian way: by denigrating the ability of the People to work autonomously, the author expects Government to be the 'source' of the well-being of the People. May I point out that this is wholly in-line with Communist State workings and *not* something put forth by a Free People wishing to remain Free? Once the Government becomes the *granter* of goods and services, it also becomes the controller of same. That is antithetical to Western outlook on the Rights of Individuals.

Now the lovely wording of 'resources to manage these functions'! And those 'resources' come from? Taxation, tariffs and, in the Statist ideology that gives the first two items their voice, State ownership of the means of production. So, to restate the first sentence in its contextual meaning, minimally viable central government is: that which can enforce its dictates upon the people, that which controls the distribution of goods and services, and that which controls the economy of its Nation to its own ends.

And I haven't even gotten to the de-bunking part and I already have grounds to quibble with the analysis by its very basis of construction and outlook! You can tell that this will not be a fun exercise.

The Iraqi government has none of these attributes -- and no prospect of developing them. It has no coercive capacity.

Yes, it has no prospect of quickly developing into an authoritarian State because it has a Constitution, a division of Powers amongst its branches of Government and needs to come to a broad National Consensus of how to Govern well. Not RULE as dictators, autocrats and clerics would, but to Govern. And here we see this individuals first wish for the Iraqi Government: enforce its will UPON the People. Do that and you are headed upon the blood drenched pathway well marked out by previous Communist/Fascist and similar regimes. Amazing that this is seen as a NEGATIVE point, in this day and age.

The national army we hear so much about is actually trained and commanded by the Americans, while the police forces are largely controlled by local governments and have few, if any, viable links to the central government in Baghdad. (Only the Special Forces, whose death-squad activities in the capital have lately been in the news, have any formal relationship with the elected government; and they have more enduring ties to the U.S. military that created them and the Shia militias who staffed them.)

Now here we have: misreporting, misrepresentation and outright lies. Let us walk over to the Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq site and take a gander at what is being done here. First the summary Press Archive, which gives a good over-view of some of the basic 'police blotter' reporting that the MNF-Iraq site has in greater detail. Here we see operations, large and small, being conducted by the security forces of Iraq, both military and police, to help rid their Nation of insurgents, terrorists, vigilantes and crime.

The training, as reported by MNF- Iraq is multinational in scope. And NATO has a part in it.

As for the outlying sectors having 'few, if any, viable links' to the Government in Baghdad, I will use my own review of this which is here, but a few salient bits extracted for convenience: The Iraqi Army now controls over half of their own Nation without help nor guidance from the US or MNF, although some logistics and heavy lifting is still provided as seen at this MNF briefing document. So, for those areas under direct Iraq control the poor Iraqi People now have a way to get in contact with its own government via its legitimate military.

But, here again, the author of the article misses the point that Iraq has local Governates or Provinces which provide local services to their People. Those governments are held directly accountable by their people. So even in times of stress and duress, there is local authority to look towards. If this author were *correct* we would see very little of this sort of reporting and NO People of Iraq 'dropping dimes' to turn in those trying to destabilize their Nation. An authoritarian central government would just install a network of 'informers' and manipulate things clandestinely, which, in itself, would be reported by Iraqis on the web. The author has heard of those, but most likely discounts them as 'stooges of the CIA' or some such. How unfortunate that such 'stooges' cannot carry out a party-line, have entirely and often radically different viewpoints on events, and, generally, are trying to come to terms with their own Nation so it can BE a Nation.

This is one of the few times that I have ever heard anyone, anywhere, say that National Police are *better* than local police at... well... policing locally. Personally, I prefer locally accountable police officials to ones that have 10 layers of bureaucracy to get to them rather than just a mere 3 or 4. Why having locally accountable police is seen as a *bad* thing, is beyond me. That said the National Police, seen via the MNF-Iraq site and the MNSTC-I site both demonstrate that National policing capabilities are coming on-line against finding and rooting out terrorists and insurgents and such like. They are pretty far down the list on those to receive training, equipment, proper police buildings and the such like, but they do put their lives on the line and risk getting killed... and that goes for the 'infiltrators' too! Because they cannot always get assigned to areas of operation that are 'friendly' to them or commit open acts of atrocity as they are found and held accountable by their chain of command. It is not a *strong* chain of command, but it is present. As Strategypage and others have pointed out: the main problem of Iraq in the FUTURE is corruption. That is a long-term problem, which needs be sorted out once the killing levels are down to something normal for a regime distrusted and hated by its neighbors in the Middle East.

Now to these lovely 'Special Forces Death Squads': the author is merely asserting and showing no documentary evidence that such individuals involved in killings are, indeed, government backed. In point of fact they are always linked back to Ba'athist redentists, sectarian militias and terrorists of the al Qaeda -Saudi Arabia/Sunni variety or of the Sadr/Shia/Iranian variety. For this a simple review of the MNF-Iraq press archives, identifying where arms and individuals were found, what their activities were and what their ideological outlook is does just fine.

The quick gloss: al Qaeda uses IEDs with some sniper rifles and other assorted munitions, the Sadr/Iranians use lots of guns, RPGs and are installing rockets. That is a quick sieve, needless to say, but helps put things into scope and perspective. What we CAN say, with the capture of Iraqi Army and Police uniforms and badging equipment previously in the riverine operations is that the terrorists and militias are set on putting out IMPERSONATORS that LOOK like legitimate Army and Police. Which is one of the reasons Sunni and Shia BOTH want MNF folks on patrol with them until a better way of differentiating impersonators from the real thing is found.

Basically, extreme assertions need extreme evidence, and is lacking. Again, hit the various military web sites for the MNF to find reviews of weapons and equipment caches.

There, First Point, First Paragraph ADDRESSED by contextual analysis.

Administratively, the Iraqi government has no existence outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone -- and little presence within it. Whatever local apparatus exists elsewhere in the country is led by local leaders, usually with little or no loyalty to the central government and not dependent on it for resources it doesn't, in any case, possess.

Now here, we just have a willful misrepresentation of support and no context beyond, basically, saying that Baghdad is bad, therefore the rest of the Nation is too. To address this I will look to the ever capable Gateway Pundit. First off this report Looking at the Security Situation in Iraq, which actually uses factual evidence from Backtalk to rebut the NYT. It is hard to see how large-scale religious festivals like those of the past week or so could go on UNMOLESTED in Iraq. I mean so many thousands if not tens of thousands of TARGETS to hit... far beyond any mere militia to protect no matter *where* the festival is held. And yet, the number of people killed and wounded by bombings, snipers, automatic weapons, RPG's, and the such like? Zero.

In Baghdad itself, this is clearly illustrated in the vast Shiite slum of Sadr city, controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and his elaborate network of political clerics. (Even U.S. occupation forces enter that enormous swath of the capital only in large brigades, braced for significant firefights.)

Gateway Pundit then goes onto look at the Security Situation in Baghdad, and shows how the combined militaries and police are cooperating to section and clear the city on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis and then leave valid and known security personnel to patrol the cleared areas. The start of this was covered back in JULY at the MNF-Iraq website, which gave the talks, briefings and such of how the methodology would work and how it would be performed and who was going to be doing the work... look for "Operation Together".

After that the event that is having Kurds glued to their televisions: the Trial of Saddam for a massacre in Kurdistan. The Central Criminal Court of Iraq has gotten its act together and is regularly working through the legal process of convicting tens of terrorists, illegal militias and such every week, while holding to the highest profile case around, that of Saddam's Trial, to International review. And they have gotten rid of the non-sense of having Saddam break the rules of courtroom decorum, disrespecting the court and using indimidation and threats against witnesses. The court we first saw a YEAR AGO has changed its composition via replacing the judge and getting someone in who keeps strict order in the court. By doing THIS the working of that court are now seen as legitimate by the People of Iraq, and gaining the trust of those People as an honest broker. The Kurds watch to see that the rest of Iraq CARES about them via this method and it is helping to knit the Nation together as a whole. So, how can Provinces be administered, peace kept by the Iraqi Army and a central criminal proceeding in Baghdad go on WITHOUT some form of National Government? And notice it is a National Government, not a Central Government. By wishing for an authoritarian Central Government, the author of the article is wishing for something that is not happening. By not addressing the needs of the Nation, that author does not see that those needs can be addressed by non-centralized control mechanisms.

In the major city of the Shia south, Basra, local clerics lead a government that alternately ignores and defies the central government on all policy issues from oil to women's rights; in Sunni cities like Tal Afar and Ramadi, where major battles with the Americans alternate with insurgent control, the government simply has no presence whatsoever. In Kurdistan in the north, the Kurdish leadership maintains full control of all local governments.

Now this little bit must be referring to the problems of Iranian infiltration into Iraq. I address this in my bit on the Second Iranian Foreign Legion - Mahdi Army. One of the former followers of Sadr reported this little tidbit to Newsmax:

"I used to fight for free," a former member of Sadr's forces tells Newsweek, "but today the Mahdi Army receives millions of dollars every month from Iran in exchange for carrying out the Iranian agenda."

So here we have not so much of 'lack of government' as foreign subversion of local government. And then this little bit from Threatswatch:

Meanwhile, Sadr's followers in parliament pressed his case and made the gravest threats so far against the government. As reported in Al-Hayat, parliamentary leader Falah Shinaishal led a sit-in protest in front of Maliki's office in Baghdad, demanding that he cancel his trip in protest over attacks on the Mahdi Army as well as U.S. support for Israeli military action in Lebanon. Sahib al-Amari, noted as a leader of the Sadrist faction, warned of direct conflict between "units of the Mahdi Army on the one hand and American and Iraqi forces on the other hand if the arrests and raids against the Mahdi Army by these forces do not halt." Amari specifically pointed to "the occupying forces, with the support of the 37th Battalion in the Iraqi Army burned down a house in Sadr City and arrested an entire family." Amari further stated that U.S. troops had attacked "the office of the martyr Sadr [likely a reference to Muqtada's father] in Mahmudiya killing 10 guards and letting loose 49 prisoners who had been captured by the Sadr faction police." The article quotes Amari as ending by "warning of a flood of fighting in the streets of Iraq between the Mahdi Army and the American troops along with the government troops who support them."

Which points to something wholly different going on, now, doesn't it? And my following commentary:

You see we are so nasty as to disregard the 'Sadr Police' because they are ILLEGAL and release individuals held ILLEGALLY by them. Why we are giving law and order a bad name... by enforcing law and order! Should just let vigilante justice roam throughout Sadr City, I guess.

In the Middle East when someone starts making bold and nasty threats, it is usually not that they are unwilling to try and carry them out... but it usually does point to the fact that they do not have the forces on the ground to establish their fact and must put it forth by bluster and coercion. Actually having to DO something is limited to when one has the resources to actually DO THEM, otherwise negotiations, threats, bullying and intimidation are put in their place. And when that doesn't work, the old authoritarian method of rounding them up, putting them in a jail out of sight and working them over does just fine. So that is the answer to Sadr: nasty, malicious, Iranian backed thug. Such a thing as putting an end to a thug that has foreign backing is difficult to do, but is being done. The question is not about *if* they are being backed by Iran, but is Iran willing to go to war over this?

As to how there is no representation for women's rights, minority rights and the such like, lets take a snippet from Babil, Iraq:

Seeking a unified province free from terrorism and factional violence, leaders of Iraqi groups in Babil came together Aug. 20 in al-Hillah to reconcile and denounce the attacks that have plagued the country.

Iraqi security forces leadership, representatives of the Iraqi national government, local government officials, civic leaders, tribal sheiks and religious leaders joined together at the Iraqi Police academy convention hall to map out a strategic plan to shape a peaceful future for Babil.

...

"We have Sunnis, Shia, women, children – that is a miracle in this day and age,” he said. “Everybody knows what needs to be done, but General Qais is the person who decided that it was time to quit talking and start acting.”

The idea sprung from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s 24-point national reconciliation initiative outlined to the Iraqi National Council of Representatives in June. Sectarian violence has plagued Iraq for much of the year, and leaders of Babil said they wanted to lead the rest of the nation in heeding Maliki’s words.

...

Speaking on behalf of a women’s rights group, Alkhafaji said sectarian violence is destroying the greatest part of Iraqi culture – the family.

When the man of the house dies, there is no one to provide for the family, no backbone present to steer the children to their future, said Alkhafaji. When a woman is killed, it crushes the family dynamic and children lose the comforting, tender side of the family.

“A woman without her man is like land without water,” she said. “And a man without his woman is like a ship without sail.”

Numerous Sunni and Shia tribal leaders spoke to the congregation and offered their hand to one another, promising to not let the trouble witnessed in Baghdad infiltrate their region.

“We are not Sunni or Shiite, Kurdish or Christians,” one sheik said. “We are Iraqis, and we intend to secure Iraq. The people who are fighting the old regime and each other are the same people that have lived together for over a thousand years and have drank from these two rivers.”

...

As the day wore on, Qais presented a draft reconciliation agreement for consideration.

The last paragraph read: “We have sworn this oath; we accept the promise of the Provincial Government to provide security for all citizens without regard to their sect, ethnicity or political party affiliation and to work toward inclusive, representative government unencumbered by bias and disenfranchisement.”

Qais then challenged the more than 500 in attendance to sign the oath, pledging to exert every effort to make Babil the place all of Iraq strives to be. A large reproduction of the document was placed by the door as the crowd exited.

Everyone signed it.

“Let Babil be the example for the freedom and the mixture that we have in Iraq,” said Col. Abbas, al-Hillah police chief.

Smiles and kind words were abundant as the participants headed home. More work is left to be done, but the initiative Qais introduced seemed to have struck a chord with a people fed up with violence and instability.

Now THAT is something that goes absolutely against what the author is trying to purport! A 'reconciliation plan' to 'unite the country' across ethnic, sectarian and even gender boundaries so that everyone is seen as equal. And being led by a General and a local Police chief, to boot!

Now, this video from MNF-Iraq does gloss over things somewhat, but that is how video presentations work. Patrols in Tal Afar and other areas are happening. In point of fact things are starting to transition from US Forces there to local Iraqi forces, as seen in this report covering Ramadi and Tal Afar. Which is indicative of the hard work as witness this report from two weeks previously, about cooperation between the US forces, Iraqi Army and local Police to start working together and shift the load to the local Army and Police and away from the US forces.

Now in the Kurdish regions we have the major problem of the PKK inciting cross-border problems and the local Kurds having problems tracking them down and keeping them out. Thus, both Iran and Turkey have staged military operations on the Iraqi border and even, in the case of Turkey, staged incursions into Iraq against the PKK. This 05 MAY 2006 talk with the General in charge goes over some of this. Who has an interesting article on the Kurds in SYRIA not, apparently, getting along well due to Syrian assassination of a cleric and repressive activities in general. So, I see things inside Iraq in the Kurdish regions as generally ok, but with some major cross-border disputes and ethnic problems which have existed since the Treaty of Lausanne.

Well, that took care of the First Point, Second Paragraph! Lovely, isn't it?

As for resources, with 85% of the country's revenues deriving from oil, all you really need to know is that oil-rich Iraq is also suffering from an "acute fuel shortage" (including soaring prices, all-night lines at gas stations, and a deal to get help from neighboring Syria which itself has minimal refining capacity).

Iraq has a huge problem... one that we are a bit familiar with in the US: Cars.

Not the lack of them at this point, although the Saddam regime rationed their purchases, skimmed off the top heavily and required oodles of paperwork to even get one.... gas was relatively cheap, but then there were very few cars on the road. Ever since the removal of the regime we have seen something new there: traffic jams. Iraqis are buying cars. Lots of cars. (Source: Institute for Transport and Development Policy, May 14, 2004.)

Under Saddam Hussein, automobiles carried an import tariff of close to 100%. Combined with little free capital, this led to very low levels of motorization, despite the low price of gasoline. In the 12 months since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, tariffs have not been enforced. This has lead to well over half a billion dollars worth of car purchases coming in from one port alone, according to people familiar with these shipments interviewed by ITDP.

So, a half-billion dollars in cars, say the average price of a used car is $15,000 and you get around 30,000 new cars on the road in just one year. But they aren't selling for $15,000... oh, no...

The mid-nineties models sell for about $3000 in Iraq. Receiving ports earn about $20-30 a car, and the shipper gets $100 a car. The vehicles come in on container ships with 2,000-3,000 cars, which are emptied within 48 hours, creating a convoy of cars and car trailers from the port to Iraq.

So, that is one-fifth the price so multiply the number of cars by FIVE and you get 150,000 new cars on the road in one year. And due to cross-border trade and other such things it turns out that this is an *underestimate*....

Since last April, over 250,000 cars are estimated as having gone into Iraq from Aqaba. Minivans are particularly popular.

Does Iraq have a gasoline problem? Why yes, yes it does. Does it stem from incompetence at the highest levels? Why no, no it doesn't... it stems from people having enough money to buy cars for themselves at a clip that no one predicted. In point of fact that 'last April' was April of 2003 and there was STILL fighting going on in the streets! Talk about 'pent up demand'!

The resulting motorization has already led to congestion in Baghdad’s streets, but the consequences of this rapid influx of cars are potentially far-reaching. As Iraq rebuilds, traffic jams will likely lead to pressure to spend scarce public resources on road building. Because these are older vehicles, and no emissions controls are in place, Iraq’s car fleet will be far more polluting than its western counterparts.

Motor vehicles are a poor investment, especially in a weak economy. Economic growth rates are lower in countries with higher levels of elite consumption (which includes non-essential car ownership), because it leaves less for investment and savings. Meanwhile, though profits are made all along the supply chain stretching from European used car dealers to the Iraqi end user, the Iraqi government is too much in disarray to capture any taxes and import duties. Iraq will be paying for this year of chaos for decades to come.

And the idea that people will *wait* for some State-sponsored transport, when they have had enough of THAT for 3 decades and twiddle their thumbs waiting for it is ludicrous. But, governments being governments, what did they do? Why, they put a restriction that only cars made after 2003 could be imported! Yes, only NEW CARS can be imported into Iraq now. And then, to address the fact that they were selling gasoline at less than the cost of production, the Iraqi Government had to *increase* gasoline prices... it is a State owned business so they may do as they like, but running it economically is a *good* idea. And what happens? Gas prices go UP, car sales go DOWN! Unless, you happen to know someone in Kurdistan... *they* can still get used cars to ship down south. At just a 30% markup! A steal compared to that $15,000 for a new car.

So, by December 2005 the Iraqi Government finally tried to set matters right, but since April of 2003 cars were selling at 250,000 a year clip if not faster. So, on the most conservative end you would see about 675,000 cars on the road over and above what was around during Saddam's time, and if people *really* got into a buying frenzy it could easily have been double that. And that is ONLY FROM AQABA!

Now Iraq also has a problem in that its entire petroleum infrastructure, like everything else, dates from the 1970's and any and all repairs stopped when Iraq went to war with Iran. This stuff hasn't been regularly serviced, upgraded and such for almost 30 years. And, due to the fact that there is *still* conflict of a sectarian/terrorist/insurgent flavor going on in those provinces, oil companies are unwilling to come into Iraq to add capacity to that infrastructure. That, as they say, is a problem. However, the Iraqi oil ministry is building and plans to build more refineries to address this problem and hopes to be a net gasoline exporter by 2010. The Kurds are, however, happy that a Norwegian company is drilling and finding oil in their area, which may help alleviate some of their cash flow and security problems.

In general Iraq is exporting a bit more oil, but with single month dips here and there, but overall the 2.0 Million barrels per day has risen slowly to 2.2 Mbd and indicates a steady increase and recovery of the oil industry for crude oil production. Getting hard data on the entire Iraqi oil industry is difficult, and confirmed figures only go up to 2003. And even a recent chronology of events ends in DEC 2005. These problems are being addressed not only by the Iraqi Government, but by Iraq Revenue Watch as seen by their latest report ( p. 7 ):

The situation is even more severe in the downstream sector. Iraq’s refining capacity meets less than half of its domestic needs. Only 400,000bbl/d were processed on average in 2005. Demand for fuels surged by 40% since 2003 due to the lifting of sanctions and the import of a large number of cars and household appliances; and interruptions to electricity supplies are forcing many middle class households to depend on wasteful kerb-side generators. Significant price subsidies encourage energy waste, black market activities and smuggling. Iraq imported anywhere between US$4bn and US6$bn of fuel in 2005 and the World Bank estimates that fuel and food subsidies together are nearly 50% of GDP.

Which basically points out the above analysis: consumption skyrocketed after 2003 and the old infrastructure, under attack and needing repairs, rebuilding and replacing was not and is not up to that task. And their conclusion on page 13:

The Iraqi professionals, civil servants and activists meeting in Beirut demonstrated as this report shows that it is possible to move away from zero-sum, divisive politics and achieve consensus on petroleum policies which would benefit all Iraqis. They did this by working within an open and inclusive framework and through their dedication to the public interest without a claim to power or regard to ethnic, sectarian and party political affiliation. Sustaining this model for generating policy ideas and proposals in the future; flushing out and elaborating some of the main recommendations and ideas outlined above; and promoting them with decision makers and the public at large are the best ways to follow up on an interesting and productive meeting.

This is after addressing ALL of the constitutional, legal, transparency and so on, issues for the entire Iraqi petroleum sector. Yes, quite an accomplishment. Until more refining capability can be BUILT, Iraq will need to import a good portion of refined fuel products, just no two-ways about it. But there are solid and firm plans in-place, commitment and expansion in the petroleum industry within Iraq. Plans need time, money and hard work to finish... complaining about the lack of the Soviet era infrastructure in Iraq now and not addressing the underlying problems is a pure and outright lie by omission.

The almost helpless Iraqi government has had little choice but to accept the dictates of American advisors and of the International Monetary Fund about exactly how what energy resources exist will be used. Paying off Saddam-era debt, reparations to Kuwait from the Gulf War of 1990, and the needs of the U.S.-controlled national army have had first claim. With what remains so meager that it cannot sustain a viable administrative apparatus in Baghdad, let alone the rest of the country, there is barely enough to spare for the government leadership to line their own pockets.

So, these poor Iraqis, barely able to control half their country... well, more than half... and as for those energy resources one can backtrack from the actual production levels I provided and get to THOSE. Strangely, the US and IMF are not playing a huge role in determining who gets what, but the Iraqi Oil Ministry *is*, and deciding upon that FOR Iraqis. And if you want to see where the money gets spent, go over to Iraq Revenue Watch and see for yourself. Debt is a problem, but they are only paying off legitimate debt, not personal debt of Saddam. This is how a legitimate government operates: it acknowledges the debt its People owe to others, even when incurred by a dictator and pays them off. In full.

As for corruption, well Strategypage addressed that and it is an ongoing concern for Iraqis. One of the interesting side-effects of having close and operational quarters with MNF troops is that everyday and ordinary Iraqis get to experience how an impartial justice system works first-hand. Legitimate problems caused by those forces are brought up, everyone fairly heard and adjudicated upon the merits of the case and when the forces are at fault reparations are paid. The New Iraqi Army likes it so much that they are instituting a similar system inside their military because it WORKS. And the people watching this are now holding their Central Criminal Courts system to that same standard. This additional rundown by Strategypage includes these items of interest:

The corruption in the government is still a big problem. While there are billions of dollars in oil money and foreign aid coming in for reconstruction, Iraqis still see a lot of stealing. Then again, Iraqis are at least admitting that this is not the fault of the Americans. It's Iraqis stealing from Iraqis, and Iraqis have to solve this one.

The corruption has made politics more complicated than it has to be. Political differences are not as divisive as is the competition for key government jobs that give you the best opportunities to steal public money. The squabbling over which party gets what has prevented the new parliament from putting together a new government. It's inefficient, and embarrassing. And it's Iraqis doing it to Iraqis. This is very unpleasant for most Iraqis.

Religious zealots are often as bad as the gangsters, with their demands for "contributions," and physical violence against those who are not "Islamic enough." Iraqis know that they are descended from the people who first made beer and wine. Despite Islamic laws against alcohol, Iraqis like to enjoy a cold beer, or something stronger. But not if the Islamic lifestyle police are in the neighborhoods.

The corruption among so many Iraqi politicians, and maintenance of private armies, means that, while Saddam is gone, there are still Iraqis who would like to replace him as dictator. Democracy isn't something you just put on like a coat, and it works. You have to work at it, and while many Iraqis are, there are many more who would like to bring back the bad old days, just with a different cast of characters.

Yes, corruption and such by many of the players in Iraq is very worrying and it is endemic in the Middle East.

So thus concludes the rendition of First Point, Third Paragraph and the entire point in full.

What we see is a compendium of: misstatements of facts, omission of facts, facts out of context, and pure and outright lies. While making a point or two, here and there, the overall analysis of this first 'Thing you didn't know about Iraq' has proved to be an outright fabrication in full and complete.

Starting from an ideological viewpoint of government that is totalitarian in outlook and going through that outlook to then complain that the Iraqi government is not *acting* like a totalitarian government and saying this is a BAD THING is wholly and completely beyond me.

I will not bother to go beyond Point 1 as it has proven to be so full of holes that it makes swiss cheese look like a solid product. Perhaps this is the 'Emperor's New Analysis'... invisible to the naked eye, but really there if you believe in it.

Wars, short... Wars, long

The ever "need-to-recheck-to-find-out-if-facts-are-just-personal-viewpoint"able people contributing to Wikipedia have a nice little table of US Wars and casualties. Actually, I am not to interested in the casualties, per se, but in the *length* of wars. Now, some wars are short and mercifully so, while others seem to just drag on and on... Now, lets hit the highlights! (My thanks to the days between dates onlineconversion utility!)

American Revolution: Start date April 19, 1775
British Surrender at Yorktown: October 19, 1781 - 2,314 days
Treat of Paris: September 3, 1783 - 3,059 days
Last British Forces to leave, from New York City: November 25, 1783 - 3,142 days
Signed by Congress: January 14, 1784 - 3,192 days
Finishing of Constitution: September 17, 1787 - 4,543 days
Ratification of Constitution: March 4, 1789 - 5,068 days
Washington elected President, assumes office: April 30, 1789 - 5,125 days

Quasi-War, or Undeclared War with France
Starts: July 7, 1798
Ends: September 30, 1800 - 815 days

Barbary Wars
First: (now there should be some *real* start date to this... and this german site gives 1 May... so be it!) May 1, 1801
End: June 10, 1805 - 1,501 days
Second: March 13, 1815
End: June 30, 1815 - 107 days

Northwest Indian War
Start - Treaty of Wyandot: January 21, 1785 (I'm using this as a start date as it makes official things that become grievances for war... yes, a treaty that made things worse)
End: August 3, 1795 - 3,846 days

War of 1812
Start: June 8, 1812
Treaty of Ghent: ratified & proclaimed - February 18, 1815 - 975 days

Mexican-American War
Hostilities start for cassus belli: April 24, 1846
Declaration of War by US: May 13, 1846 - 19 days
End: February 2, 1848 - 649 days

US Civil War
Fighting starts: April 12, 1861
Last Confederate forces to surrender: CSS Shenandoah November 4, 1865 - 1,667 days

Western Indian Wars - cumulative, used to show duration of struggle
Start: Arikara War - June 1, 1823 (citation)
End: October 5, 1898 - 27,520 days

Philippine-American War
Start: February 4, 1899
End: May 1, 1902 (last capable general surrenders while sick and his forces in April) - 1,181 days
The Philippine Autonomy Act (Jones Law) - August 29, 1916 - 6,415 days
Philippine Sovereignty - July 4, 1946 - 17,316 days

Boxer Rebellion
Start: June 11, 1898
End: June 7, 1901 - 1,091 days

World War I - US involvement to last treaty signed
Start: April 6, 1917
Armistice: November 11, 1918 - 584 days
Treaty of Lausanne: July 24, 1923 - 2,300 days

World War II - US involvement
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941
Japan surrenders to US: August 14, 1945 - 1,346 days
Japan surrenders to China: September 9, 1945 - 1,372 days

Korean War
Start: June 25, 1950
Armistice: July 27, 1953 - 1,128 days

Vietnam War - Official US involvement, although troops had been sent to Vietnam under Truman in 1950
Start: November 1, 1955
End: Signature of Foreign Assistance Act, ending all support of South Vietnam - December 30, 1974 - 6,999 days

1991 Gulf War
Start: Iraq invades Kuwait - August 2, 1990
Ceasefire: February 27, 1991 - 209 days

Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan component
Initial attack: September 11, 2001
Hostilities commence: October 7, 2001 - 26 days
Last cities surrender: December 7, 2001 - 87 days
Elected Loya Jirga meets: June 11, 2002 - 303 days
Constitutional Legislative Elections: September 18, 2005 - 1,468 days

Iraq War - Operation Iraqi Freedom
Congressional Authorization for the Use of Force: October 11, 2002
Invasion of Iraq: March 20, 2003 - 160 days
Iraqi conventional forces declared defeated: May 1, 2003 - 202 days
Iraqi Legislative Election : January 30, 2005 - 842 days
Iraqi voting on Constitution: October 15, 2005 - 1,100 days
Constitutional Legislative Elections: December 15, 2005 - 1,161 days
Government of Iraq: May 20, 2006 - 1,317 days

Now there is perspective for you! So many folks going on about the war dragging on and on... now lets take a look at Iraq from today, August 22, 2006 which is 1,411 days into Iraq.

First we are still a few years short of Yorktown on the Revolutionary War timescale and about 1/3 of the way to the last British forces leaving the US. In fact, from the start of the Revolution to a fully and Constitutionally elected government we are a bit more than 1/4 of the way to doing the same in Iraq in helping those folks get their house in order after over 3 decades of tyranny.... and it is half a world away.

Secondly, we had wound up a few wars in less time and more satisfactorily, like the Quasi-War, War of 1812, Mexican-American War, the official part of the Philippine-American War, helping out against the Boxer Rebellion, the European portion of WWI, WWII, the Korean War and First Gulf War.

More to the point lets look at establishing something a bit larger via war and post-war. As mentioned the Revolutionary War was much longer, costlier in US lives as a portion of population (something like 10% of the then current population) and took forever to get a real government in place.

The Barbary Wars took a bit longer to finally get sorted out, didn't last that way and only really ended once the Ottoman Empire took over, so the initial problem of tribute to Muslims was ended, but only by a larger State taking over the place.

Getting the Indian problem settled in the Northwest Territories took a decade and still had some minor problems even after that. Of course this was part of a much larger problem that continued on from 1823 to 1898 as the US settled and expanded into the territory of the continent and established government and control. But, it was a low-level conflict of ongoing strife that flared up into pitched battles and revolts and then quieted down again. Somehow the Nation persevered over those 75 years. Not pretty, but it did happen.

A look at the Philippines to actually setting up a way to transfer power and setting *that* into place, took a long, long time and the US faced a continuous insurgency for about a decade after the end of the official conflict. Call it around 5,000 some-odd days to that and then the Jones Act passing into Law. Seen in *that* light, Iraq is going at a blistering pace and leaving skid marks as its tires rev up to speed! A long, long way to 17,000 and some days, and we are not even 10% of that. This would make previous generations *green* with envy, to have a US force so competent and capable that it can get a real government stood up with the HELP of the people in a foreign land and then fight the insurgency there WITH them. Look at how long it took in the Philippines and one gets the idea that the US had a will to stay and do the right thing there that is positively lacking today....and YES we also fought TWO WORLD WARS while that went on and had to LIBERATE the Philippines after the Japanese took it over. Where ARE the Americans of that era today? Yes, dead and buried save for the 'Greatest Generation'... and apparently their spirit of the Nation with them or is just tuckered out.

Vietnam was a huge slog, and the main problems there were: 1) Not allowing US forces to actually capture and control North Viet Namese territory, 2) Not allowing the South Vietnamese to do the same, 3) the resupply from the USSR and China which effectively had to resupply 3 or 4 COMPLETE North Viet Namese armies, 4) Not cutting off North Viet Nam's supply lines heading INTO their country, 5) Not following up the successful counter-insurgency against the Viet Cong to then roll back the North Viet Namese Army. Triple canopy jungle was a huge problem... but not addressing the strategic resupply of North Viet Nam nor their ability to continually take in supplies and feed them southwards was a huge problem: going after the supply into South Viet Nam did *not* address the problem of the supplies getting to North Viet Nam in the first place. Even with that the US had rendered the NVA incapable of open combat and *then* decided it was time to pull out and cut off supplies to South Viet Nam. Iraq, by these standards is going *swimmingly* with far fewer US forces needed, far fewer casualties, and the only resupply to insurgents needing to come through mountain or open desert territory. These resupplies are NOT of tanks, aircraft, armored personnel carriers, helicopters and the such, but small arms and explosives used to kill civilians. This is also war by proxy by Saudi Arabia and Iran against each other for the Nation known as Iraq... and Iraqis are not liking being in the shooting gallery between their countrymen in the pay of these folks.

What is Iraq like? Well, getting a government that is recognized in place took the US a hell of a long time... but then we had to INVENT how to do it while it was going on. Still, even by modern standards of the Philippines, say, this is still *excellent* progress.

What still has not been addressed is that while Afghanistan harbored terrorists, and Iraq supported multiple terrorist organizations with training and equipment... and Iran and Syria openly support terrorism... the real problem of Transnational Terrorism and how to fight it has not been addressed. Instead we get mis-reporting on the conflict as a whole with MSM collusion to boot! And even with all of this defeatist, anti-American reporting that the US can do *nothing* right being hit day by day with this... ONLY 30% of the American people are against the war, and really haven't figured out that killing or submission is the only thing that these terrorists have in store for them. Because there are no such things as 'neutral, non-combatant civilians' to them and no path to peace via terrorism.

So you could say that 30% of the American people are FOR the end of civilization and national suicide...



Oh, one other war... the Cold War

Cold War
Starts: June 24, 1948 Berlin Blockade
Ends: December 25, 1991 - 15,889 days.

The Military, The Elites and You

The following is a cross-posting from The Jacksonian Party. [updated 27 AUG 2006]

This is a personal perspective paper of The Jacksonian Party, and not part of the official Party Platform, yet. Yet being the operable word.

I have taken some time to look around at the 'Right' side of the political 'spectrum' going wobbly and falling apart. But doing just a teensy bit of research I found out a few things that I think is worth sharing with you to demonstrate why Jacksonianism is neither Left or Right, Liberal or Conservative, or, indeed, any pro/anti or Coke/Pepsi choice.

First up is this lovely little item from The Quarterly Journal, No. 1 March 2003 (p.103):

At this point, it is easy to foresee that casualty aversion is not only a governmental problem. Hence, as Weinberger states, fighting in the current context will require a high level of public support. This assumption, largely driven by the U.S. experience in the Vietnam War, directly involves the public as a major actor in this debate. Charles Reiss, in February 2001, related elements of the Future Strategic Context for Defence to this: "The armed forces, both in peacetime and on operations, will come under greater public and pressure group scrutiny." Through this type of attitude, governments seem to project casualty phobia onto the public, and treat it as if it is a weakness in the nation to be fought. The media are the other foci of attention for these concerns in governments. Reiss mentions "the pressure from public opinion and the media for minimum casualties" This is perfectly illustrated by the declaration of U.S. General Wesley Clark after the Kosovo campaign: "When you start to lose these expensive machines (aircraft), the countdown starts against you. The headlines begin to shout, `NATO loses a second aircraft,' and the people ask, `How long can this go on?' Therefore, although governments recognize casualty aversion, they tend to attribute the pressure behind the phenomenon to the media and the public.

Yes, governments and the media project a lack of will to fight on the public... not the other way around. Fun, isn't that? Say how do you like being told by the government and media what is or is not your will to fight? Remember that there are those that want 'zero casualty warfare' in which flowers are strewn instead of bullets, and everyone sits in the campfire and sings together... while someone else sneaks up and slits your throat, I guess. I never could fathom that. But at least they are HONEST in the fact that they are pacifists and that 'no war is just'... or at least semi-honest, since they want all those 'black, brown and other people of color' to be freed, but then complain when that freedom must be paid for. They probably thought the best way to disarm someone out to kill you is to sit down at a conference table with coffee and donuts and figure out exactly when and how harshly you will be killed.

Worse than those are those that 'want to show their Conservative colors' and will boldly outwait the Liberal counterparts by a factor of two or three... these folks are *also* in the elite telling you how far you should go in purchasing liberty at the cost of lives. And both, quite frankly, are reprehensible and struggling with Viet Nam Syndrome. They have seen no war that we shouldn't run away from.

Now, since the good General Wesley Clark was involved, lets take a bit of a look at some further things from that same study (pp.105-106):

At first, the public seems to be the favorite source to which to attribute casualty aversion. Nevertheless, this is an assumption that is too easy to make. For example, several studies exist stating that the public is not casualty averse at all. In The Myth of the Reactive Public, Kull and Ramsay conduct an in-depth analysis of surveys done during recent conflicts. The results of this study are simple: the public is much more robust regarding casualties than initially expected. In particular, they reach this conclusion for the Gulf War, the crisis in Mogadishu, and the attack against the U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon in 1986. After the images of the incident in Somalia were seen, the public wanted more U.S. involvement and retaliation. Likewise, U.S. public support reached its peak when severe losses occurred in the Gulf War and in the days following the terrorist attack in Lebanon. Dealing with the Vietnam War, Jeffrey Record comes to this surprising conclusion: “In retrospect, it is amazing that public support remained as strong as long as it did, given the war's geographic remoteness and the predominantly abstract quality of declared U.S. war aims." Initially, the polls were clear: the public did not respond by demanding an immediate withdrawal. Furthermore, they describe the misperceptions of the public with regard to the number of casualties. Their starting point for this study was a PIPAsurvey in 1999, where American people estimated that 172 U.S. soldiers died in Bosnia, whereas the U.S. actually had no casualties. This survey envisaged different scenarios of degradation. Each time, the public responded with a large majority demonstrating a will to reinforce or to retaliate. A similar survey by PIPA, in 1999, leads to the same conclusions.

Ah, the American people not only think that freedom can be bought with casualties but EXPECT IT! Even when there are ZERO actual casualties, the common folk of the US think that we have paid a price for freedom in blood. And do note that the incidents in Somalia and Bosnia and Kosovo are AFTER the end of the Cold War. Fascinating stuff, isn't it? But there is a worrisome conclusion, which starts to add context for today, and it is this from the same report (p. 121):

As soon as the ice of the Cold War melted, when nuclear deterrence was no longer the primary factor in the balance, nations came back to the ancient criteria of waging war. Hence, war with true soldiers on true battlefields again becomes possible. If the role of soldiers becomes central again, then casualty aversion - the ability or the reluctance to commit lives or suffer deaths for a cause - returns to the center of the debate.

Which is why the reports of the worst of goings-on in Iraq or Afghanistan are central and key to this conflict against Transnational Terrorism. Yes, we are back to the ancient criteria of war, but with 'modern sensibilities' of looking to take 'zero casualties'. And this is reflected by the pacifistic Left and by the wobbly Right: both of these 'sides' believe that there is a set 'limit' on how much the public is willing to take in the way of death and destruction in warfare. The Left gives a lower limit and the Right gives an upper one... as told to them by their ELITES. Yes, the Left and Right are BOTH guided by Elites that are telling them what is and is not acceptable for We the People to accept as a death toll in combat.

You do realize that in a Republic of Free People that *this* is also a degradation of responsibility and liberty? Go with a 'side' and follow its 'direction' and You lose Your voice by trying to join it *exactly* with others and NOT tell Your perspective as You see it. By wanting to be part of the 'crowd' or 'mass' or 'Left' or 'Right' or 'Conservative' or 'Liberal', individuals give up their RIGHT to have an independent telling *heard* and, instead, look for bloc-centered 'unity' and 'cohesion'. There is a WORD for joining together like a bundle of sticks and cohering as separates but losing your identity as an individual to form something stronger: Fascism.

And by deciding that the price is 'too high' or the war 'incompetently fought' and then 'calling for withdrawal' because we are 'in a quagmire' is the chorus chanting at the direction of their Elite. That Elite gets to edit the information coming in, form some 'well-read opinion' and then issue that opinion forth as the limit of validity for their part of the political 'spectrum'. A spectrum that seems to be bi-color in perspective, and are turning into shades of grey. And where does the everyday Citizen of the Republic fit in? Well, unless you like taking choral direction and repeating the songs to the drumbeat of your 'side'... you do NOT fit in. The MSM is, of course, giving the drum-beating extra reverb by ONLY reporting those things that support the defeatist drum-beat.

They will mis-report or just plain ignore factual information.

They will use the old maxim of local news: if it bleeds, it ledes.

They will not exercise editorial oversight on forged documents.

They will not come clean on all of the factual information they have nor make it available.

They will say that they 'never expected anything like this to happen' although they have been warned about it by their OWN professionals for over a decade.

They will not put news into historical context nor into timelines of events nor show surrounding information.

They will report on what Officials say that they have said and NOT look to see if they are being truthful.

They will try to treat individual terrorist groups as if they were independent and not inter-dependent.

They will report on staged events as if they were 'factual' and then say they are 'fake but accurate'.

They have become the exact same thing they established themselves as not being: Yellow Journalists. But their color of yellow is not jingoistic, it is cowardice and defeatism.

They think that the power of the press belongs to publishers. And they are wrong. It belongs to the People, and the People are living in the wonder era of Benjamin Franklin.

What is it that is happening in Iraq that is so bad? The death toll? Then lets put THAT into perspective, also. From Useless Knowledge comes this little ditty, and it does go on and on, so I will take a highly particular piece, but the deaths are put into perspective there in far more pointed terms than I am doing:

The military protection that we vitally need involves big costs of all kinds. One of these is that, even in peacetime, about 1,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors die every year from accidents, which is much higher than the per capita civilian accident rate. That's right, it's every year, in peacetime! (The reference for this is an item by Princeton University professor Jeffrey Herbst, on page A22 of the August 4, 1994 New York Times.) I'm not trying to say that the present death rate in Iraq is something to ignore, but it is a load that our big, rich country must bear, in order to stay free and safe.

Yes, the normal, annual death toll of being in the military in PEACETIME is 1,000/year. As a co-worker that had retired from the Marine Corps, then Federal Service with the CIA, and now works for a Federal Contractor said (and I paraphrase): 'Well, in a week of large scale exercises we lost 4 men. So Iraq [then just winding up the active combat part] looks to be about what you would expect of a large scale training exercise against an armed opponent.' I respect him because he did Marine BDA in Viet Nam... where, to make sure you chose the right target, YOU got to go on the patrol after it was hit. You were tasked to take care of it and you did.

But you are looking for figures! Ah, well lets give some of those, too... a nice graph of things leading up to 9/11 should do.

Taken from Population Bulletin 2004 - America's Military Population, as is the following citation:

Most military deaths are not combat related (see Figure 5). Mortality rates in the American military are lower than the general population because military personnel are younger and healthier than the average American. Servicemen and women undergo a rigorous health screening prior to induction or commissioning, and they have access to the largest health care delivery system in the world. In the early 1980s, there were slightly more than 110 deaths per 100,000 active-duty personnel per year, and the trend has been generally downward, albeit with dramatic reversals during the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War, and from 2001 to 2002 (the most recent data available by cause), reflecting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and subsequent military operations. The percentage of military deaths due to hostile action or terrorist attacks has not exceeded 1 percent, except in 1983, when a Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed; in 1991, during the Persian Gulf War; and in 2001, when the Pentagon was attacked on Sept. 11.

Military service is not necessarily a safe occupation even in peacetime. In most years, more than one-half of active-duty fatalities, and in some years as many as two-thirds of such fatalities, are attributable to accidents—primarily vehicle and training accidents. Far fewer fatalities are attributed to illness. On average, 18 percent of active duty fatalities each year are due to illness, with relatively little variation.

More than 100 military personnel take their own lives each year. When the armed forces were larger, the number exceeded 200 each year, although there is considerable annual variation. In the early 1980s, about 10 percent of military fatalities were self-inflicted. Military suicides rose in the late 1980s and peaked in the mid- 1990s at a rate more than double that of the early 1980s. Some analysts have attributed the increase in the 1980s in part to the Army’s experimental unit manning system, which made personnel management much more rigid and was accompanied by an increase in stress-related symptoms. The continued increase in suicides in the 1990s might have been affected by an increase in the rate of peacekeeping deployments after the end of the Cold War in Europe, resulting in increased family separations. The military suicide rate declined initially in 2001 and 2002, to about 11 percent, which is well below the rate for civilians of comparable ages. But the suicide rate did not recede to the level of the early 1980s; in fact it appears to have risen again during the military campaign in Iraq. In 2003, at least 22 service members committed suicide in Iraq alone. This represented about 14 percent of the non-hostile fire deaths in Iraq. Suicides accounted for 13.5 percent of deaths in the Army. Even with this recent increase, suicides represent a similar percentage of deaths in the military as among American civilians ages 20 to 34, which in 2000 was 14.6 percent of deaths among men, and 6.8 percent of deaths among women.

Homicides in the military are relatively low, around 5 percent of all military deaths—less than half the rate accounted for by suicide. In contrast, homicide is a major cause of death among young African American men in civilian life—accounting for 35 percent of deaths to African American civilian men ages 20 to 34 in 2000, and 11 percent of deaths among African American civilian women in this age group. The comparable 2000 figures for whites were 8 percent for men and 6 percent for women. African Americans face a lower risk of homicide in the military than in civilian life.

That is a pretty unvarnished view of things. So, in Iraq 18% of deaths are due to illness (which is an invariant, although climate changes the *nature* of the illnesses) and 14% of deaths are suicides. That is 32% of deaths due to non-combat causes. The first, by being invariant across the military may budge a bit due to combat related illnesses, like stress and battle fatigue, but outright sickness is invariant: the folks get their shots before they ship over there. And the suicide rate is measured as a percentage of deaths in theater. So a whopping 1/3 of deaths in Iraq are due to illness and suicide. Now, are THESE deaths being lumped in with the COMBAT deaths at those bodycount sites? Hopefully not, but if they are then you may want to cut them by 1/3 to get an idea of what the combat deaths look like there.

[UPDATE: reworking numbers at The Belmont Club got me the following:
Population study a few times, and it can be read as the 18% + 14% as illness and suicide are accounted separately, but there is weasle wording on the 14% in Iraq as 'part of the non-hostile deaths'. So that lumps it in with: accidents, illness and homicides. The 18% for illness is stated, previously, as invariant across the entire military, including Iraq. And as the actual death toll due to hostile fire for population size has been small, as cited by Wretchard... that is not going to make that percentage budge overmuch.

Now homicides are also an invariant at 5% across all the military deaths.

Accidents in peacetime account for 50% to 66% of all fatalities in the military, excluding illness, homicides and suicides.

Thus the relative invariants add up to: 18% + 5% + 50% = 73% due to illness, homicides and accidents *combined*. As given, and the article could have cleared this up with a few tables, added TO that is suicides. So with that you would get 100% of the non-combat total in Iraq, so renormalizing that 73% is 86% of that sub-set. I am working on this RT and expect to come up with a different answer than my original... I am coming up with 12% of the total of all deaths being suicides in Iraq. That puts the total of all non-combat deaths to combat deaths at a ration of 85% non-combat to 15% combat in Iraq in 2004.

Damn that's a dangerous business in peacetime!

Now, are all the death tolls ensuring that we are getting an accurate reading of that 15% or are they taking spillover from other categories and attributing them to combat deaths?

I would assume the answer is *yes* as the military likes to ensure that everything is properly categorized, filed, pigeonholed and such... reporters, on the other hand, along with partisan groups... well, they tend to take a 'broader view' of things.

Fun with numbers... will have to update my previous post

END UPDATE, changes coming, premise remains]

Now, WHY is this important? Well, lets take a look at what those Elites say the US population can actually stand in the way of deaths... and what has actually been measured via polling. And here we have an interesting bit of work show up in:

CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF Strategy Essay Competition Essays 2000

Casualty Aversion: Implications for Policymakers and Senior Military Officers by Charles K. Hyde

Citation: Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, “A Look at Casualty Aversion: How Many Deaths Are Acceptable? A Surprising Answer,” The Washington Post, November 7, 1999, B3.

Mission Name	Military Elite	Civilian Elite	Mass Public
Stabilize Congo	284	484	6,861
Prevent Iraqi WMD	6,016	19,045	29,853
Defend Taiwan	17,425	17,554	20,172

So, what is it that the Elites on the Left and Right are saying? That they are more *gutsy* than the military? Well, on average, yes, but remember that this spans all the way down to ZERO for the pacifists... so the range might be somewhat weighted towards lower numbers, but not by much. What is startling is that the American Public, in 1999, was prepared to 'go the distance' in Iraq and suffer way, way, way more than has been suffered by US forces at present... and that was under President Clinton, who was no 'gung-ho/fight 'em anywhere' sort of President, indeed he suffered the first WTC bombing, the African Embassy Bombings, the Khobar Towers Attack and the USS Cole attack and did, exactly, NADA. A few cruise missiles lobbed here and there do *not* a reprisal make.

And now that the rats in Iraq are trapped, found, killed or brought to justice after only 3 years... we hear that 30% of Americans have lost heart in the struggle. ONLY 30% after the damn continuous drumbeating by the MSM, the Left and now the Right? ONLY 30%? And since it is coming pretty much equally from 'Left' and 'Right', and probably dividing the 'two parties' somewhat, say 1/3 Republican and 2/3 Democrat going against. That pretty much fits in with the Jacksonian Electorate Proposition that the Nation is NOT 50/50, but 30/30/30/10. And the question is NOT about 'pulling out from Iraq'... but Crossing the Rubicon on a path to destruction.

If you think the few handfuls of deaths per month in Iraq is bad now, then wait until that grand and glorious defeat and retreat... with Iran emboldened, Saudi Arabia pushing Wahhabism harder, direct lines of supply to Syria for Hezbollah, Israel directly threatened by troops transported directly from Iran to Lebanon. Remember what happened after deciding that it was 'unwinnable' or 'the price was too high to pay' in South Viet Nam? Do the following ring any bells: Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge, The Killing Fields, The Boat People, re-education camps, Cambodia, Laos, MIA, and so on. And do you remember the dishonoring of the American Soldiers who returned? Do you remember the phrase 'hollow military' and soon 'Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan'? And do you remember the US Diplomatic Compound in Iran, in 1979?

The very same Iran now doing their damnedest to field two Foreign Legions, destabilize the region, build nuclear weapons, annihilate Israel, kill the Sunni population of the Middle East. Do you want THEM to win? And then we can start to hear the litany of Nations terrorized and destroyed by Iran: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan... and on and on so as to re-establish the Caliphate with themselves in control.

Americans have an awesome responsibility to themselves and those that are Our Friends and Allies. We ran in South Viet Nam. And Beirut. And Somalia.

We did not respond, as is Our Right as a Nation to Tehran, three times in Beirut, Khobar Towers, WTC Bombing, African Embassy Bombings, USS Cole....

That is how Our enemies see Us.

Our Government has been afraid to act because of the immediate repercussions, and Our Elites have told us that it is better to appease 'now' than to take a stand, as some people might just get killed. So we have let Americans be butchered and killed and done *nothing* and now the weak of heart complain at the mere *interest* on the bill that we have accumulated. Welsh on this bill for this friend, this time, against these enemies, and the butcher will come calling.

For all of Us.

My letter to Editor & Publisher, RE: Photojournalism and its problems

Below is the letter I sent to Editor & Publisher on the topic at hand.

All spelling errors, errors in syntax and logic and other such are given textually as-sent.
===============================

To Whom It May Concern,

Coming from the digital pre-press, graphics publication and distribution industry I really did have to scratch my head at the recent David D. Perlmutter article Photojournalism in Crisis. This very same problem has been brought up numerous times since the early to mid-1990's with sessions at the old Seybold Seminars, PRINT shows and SIGGRAPH events clearly addressing this. My first memories were of a Seybold Seminar in or around 1994 that clearly looked at problems for newspapers and magazines and the coming rise of cheap digital cameras and photomanipulation software. Like the question of 'how will newspapers respond to digital media and declining sales?' the answer was: we don't know but we will figure it out. That mantra was repeated time and again.

So, the time to address it is now, before photojournalism is thoroughly discredited. I address the main problem of veracity of photographs and what a photojournalist or media response to that should be, here. Some have refered to this as a proposed 'code of ethics for photojournalism', missing the point that it is a constructive method to use cheap digital storage to show the veracity of photographs and their context for a single event. Events that have been staged or have evidence of broader manipulation needs an investigatory board to review such work that is independent, respected and uses the capabilities beyond that of editors and photographers to piece together what has happened at events. This is using contextual analysis of photographs and motion imagery, combined with other media sources so that placement of events and individuals in both geospatial reference and temporal reference can be established. Today when events are *staged* as historical recreations they are actually labeled as such on television: witness any of the 'true crime' shows and you will see this clearly and unmistakeably so that viewers know this is *not* the real thing. While times were more lax during World War II, Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts, the movement from staging of recreations to wholly fabricated events for footage now places the entire reporting effort of the media at doubt.

In previous times newspapermen liked to say that they gave us 'the first cut of history', with pride. Now we have the ability to put all that wound up on the 'cutting room floor of that first take' into archival storage and retrieval systems so that the actual historical information can be made available to the public. A 'first cut' becomes mere 'commentary' when it is reported without context, and biased and slanted commentary at that. By having all news organizations and journalists covering historical events with actual images make those available, these primary historical reference documents can be put into wider context and help give a flow of history beyond the 'first cut' which may be counterfactual or just biased.

The time for this was *yesterday*. All of the media will be hard pressed in the next decade as the capacity to make fully photorealistic 3D models and animations move out of the realm of hollywood studios and onto the private desktop. That has been a major concern of the graphic arts community for at least as long and is the recognition of where these tools are headed. Poor photomanipulation is not caught because it was ahistorical, but because it was poor artwork. This then brings up the question of: How many GOOD artists have been passing off their artwork as historical fact, and for how long?

As a journal addressing the areas of Editing and Publication this should be a highly worrying thing as it cuts to the credibility of all factual based reporting media, across the board. It is not that propaganda has been passed off as truthful events. It is that the editorial and publication review personnel have not the skills and ability to ensure the veracity and validity of what they are publishing, be it on paper or on display screens. These problems are *not* with those poisoning the system by putting their work into it. It is the main trust that has been placed in those that have sworn to give us an accurate and unbiased 'first cut of history' now accepting that their bias is more important than the facts.

And *that* will be the death of journalistic ethics, public trust in the media and the end of factual reporting... except by those willing to be transparent in their work and honest about their biases.

My thanks to you for your article,

[Name]
A Jacksonian


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That's it, nothing more to say!

A bit on Ringworld, the stasis field, and the rate of change

I have been an avid SF reader since around age 9 or so, and have hit perhaps not an over-wide swath of the field, but in-depth for those writers and themes I do enjoy. Basically I am a hard-tech SF fan, that expects to see the underpinnings in some form of science or at least 'plausible extrapolations'. That said the hoary old 'plot devices' of the fantastical are perfectly acceptable *if* they are backgrounding to just let the story happen.

The hardest of hard tech SF has been that of Larry Niven, in particular is Ringworld books which take place in his Known Space universe, so the Ringworld stories are a sub-set of the larger set of stories of Known Space. Ringworld, itself, was a massive concept that was derived from the Dyson sphere, but had its own inertial force of pseudo-gravity by taking a thin cylindrical cut from the median of a Dyson sphere and rotating that around the star. This class of structures are known as Megascale Engineering. A learning expedition for the mechanics of Ringworld is available here, fully interactive to demonstrate how it works. The actual physical parameters of the materials, speeds and such necessary to achieve Ringworld in an engineering sense are available here. And a quick review of some of the other neat technology and gadgetry seen in the Ringworld story are given here, along with cursory review of a few of them. Ringworld itself serves as a jumping off point for *real* teaching of engineering and physics (and even get tested on it!), and multiple individuals have led lecture series on Ringworld and other hard tech SF concepts. And the entirety of Known Space serves as a great 'icebreaker' for physics and engineering students and instructors as figuring out just what this stuff *is* and how to *make* it is challenging. So much so that after Ringworld was released it became an instant SF classic and engineers and phsicists stormed the 1971 World SF Convention to point out all the FLAWS in Ringworld... which, of course, has required follow-on novels and stories to address them.

But, Known Space holds other interesting items, beyond this big, dumb structure (which, actually, has to be pretty smart to stay stable). Of all the technologies cited by Larry Niven that are society transforming, including such things as teleportation, magnetic monopoles, monofilaments, single crystal materials, and the such, the one that would absolutely transform everything is the stasis field. Larry Niven has described this as a field which allows a time differential to happen between the interior and exterior of the field. A simple 1,000:1 ration lets 1,000 time units pass outside the stasis field for every 1 unit of internal experienced time and stasis fields seem to come in time quantums so that there are higher ratio fields that can be found, but not intermediary ones.

A stasis field, once on, is an absolutely reflective surface: all light gets reflected from it and it is a perfect mirror. The entire field and what it encloses, however, retains its properties of mass and momentum, but the field by being impervious to damage, protects the contents of it. The final *other* property of a stasis field is that they may *not* enclose each other: the outer field governs and the internal one is negated. The field itself is bounded by a mesh or wire cage that delineates its exterior surface and the field is set up between the planar elements of that mesh or cage and to everything it contains. He uses this as a final form of space suit survival mechanism, a starship survival mechanism and even one for military outposts. Further it serves as the *perfect* way to store something or someone for long periods of time, totally unharmed by the outside world.

Which brings us to the era of modern-day convenience... imagine that you could put into a stasis box the remains of that wonderful meal that you had, and then take it out days, weeks, months, years, decades or centuries later still just as you left it! Have a fatal disease? Go into stasis storage and await for the exterior world to figure out a cure! Why live through all of those decades of research or have to put up with messy cryogenic storage when you can have it in a blink of an eye? That is if the rest of the worlds *wants* you back... if not, it is a very short wait to the end of time! Install one in your house and it makes the perfect *safe room*... or around your house to protect it while you go on vacation! Interstellar travel a bore? Put yourself in stasis and you are *there*... well, everyone you left behind is millions or more years dead... but for you it was in an instant. Put a thermonuclear device in one, detonate it and turn the field on a billionth of a second after it starts.... pre-contained explosion, tamper with it and it goes *boom*, but keep it around a relatively low ratio and you have a nuclear heat radiation device that slowly emits energy of a long, long time... until the internal mesh or cage gives way... then it goes *boom*. The entire restaurant industry *instantly* goes global with hot food to your doorstep from anywhere! Not microwaved junk, but real hot food prepared by real restaurants and then stored *perfectly* with a shelf-life measured in eons. And do you have a *true criminal* beyond the hope of reform? Put them into a stasis field.... forever.

Unfortunately, unlike building the megastructure Ringworld, there appears to be no easy path to the stasis field. Or it might just be a leap of insight and be everywhere in a decade...

The General Products Hull as described is an impervious form of matter that is a single crystal or molecule. The paint job on any modern car bought from the factory has single molecules of paint, one per panel. So your everyday automobile has single, long chain molecules, already, but making them impervious to everything except anti-matter, yet still allowing gravity and electromagnetic radiation pass through would be a bit of a challenge. Yet, with carbon nanotube and other more strange forms of nanotechnology, this may be something to look forward to.

In point of fact, much of the absolute hard tech SF technology has a problem: it is either immediately invalidated due to physics... or it becomes something that falls within the realm of possibility if only we put some work at it. Technology is, actually, outrunning hard tech SF at a blistering rate for social change and for technological advancement. The idea, as an example, of organlegging or stealing organs for transplanting into other people, was pure SF in 1967 and was a result of longevity drugs and non-rejection medications to allow the human body to accept *any* donor source transplants without needs of typing and cross-matching, etc. Put those two together and Niven speculated that the death penalty would be used to harvest organs for the public... and that the death penalty would be pushed *down* in the scale of crime so as to get more organs for a population that got older, but did not *age*. And those who kidnapped individuals to harvest their organs: organleggers. And by all reports, there are a few regimes in the world practicing this at a State scale. Poster-TV? SF of 1976, and with thin film displays that are flexible now being produced for smaller things, something we can all look forward to having... roll up your screen and computer and take it with you. Flexible armor that stiffens on impact? SF of 1968, shear thickening fluid armor of today aka Dragonskin.

Paraphrasing Jerry Pournelle: the problem with writing SF is that it is coming true too fast.