Just happened across this report at Iraq Body Count from May of 2010 – remember back when Bush was President our liberals were on fire about the Lancet report which alleged a million civilian deaths in Iraq because of Bush’s criminal war for Halliburton/Likud/Oil/WhatHaveYou? Well, time has gone on and there is now a liberal Democrat in the White House, so the truth can be told:

…Iraq Body Count (IBC) applied an early and so far unanswered set of reality checks2 to the Johns Hopkins survey published in the Lancet in October 2006, a paper which has recently been comprehensively discredited in a new study by Prof. Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway University. Even among the generally inexact survey results for deaths in Iraq the “Lancet estimate” was an extreme outlier, asserting 450,000 more deaths from violence than the much larger WHO-funded study that estimated 151,000 such deaths by July 2006. The only evidence that appeared to support the Lancet finding was published by a polling company, Opinion Research Business (ORB), which estimated 1 million violent Iraqi deaths by August 2007.

In a meticulous and detailed analysis of ORB’s survey, IBC researcher Josh Dougherty and Spagat have laid to rest any notion that ORB’s massive estimate is even nominally sound, let alone capable of providing validation for another outlier…

Tip of the hat to the people at IBC for looking in to the data and debunking a rather horrific myth about Iraq. Of course, any deaths in war are terrible and 1 or 100,000 is bad – but it was a dis-service to the people and to the truth to have crazed announcements on the left about the cost of the war which were not based upon facts. All that was accomplished was to feed enemy propaganda.

Some who pressed the story, no doubt, did so for malicious reasons – most probably just passed it along because it fit the pre-conceived notion. That there might have been some sincere motives about it doesn’t help the soldiers and civilians killed in the heavy fighting which followed on such propaganda victories for the enemy. The lesson to be learned here is to not jump to conclusions – and mostly not to assume that numbers of dead or other bad things greatly exceed US military estimates. Remember, the only people under orders not to lie in Iraq were the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines…taking one thing with another, it was more likely they were telling the truth than anyone else on the ground.

War is a nasty, dangerous business and it isn’t helped at all that some people will outright lie about what is going on. Next time, liberals, have a little more respect for your military and your country. It’ll make the blood cost lower.

And, no, its not in Pakistan – its in Dearborn, MI:

I can understand what the cops thought they were trying to do – they thought they were avoiding trouble. But what they’ve done is make matters worse.

The Thomas More Law Center has entered the fray for the defense and it is hoped that the Dearborn police will be compelled to use both better judgment. One thing is certain: we must stop this truckling to Islam.

One should not think that changing horses mid stream is really all that bad in military terms. It happens fairly frequently in history, and very often with good results. It has been clear that General McChrystal had to go and, on his record, General Petraeus is clearly the most suitable man for the post.

But, can he pull it off?

In Iraq, General Petraeus had the 100% backing of President Bush to obtain whatever he needed and take as much time as required. In Afghanistan, there is a time clock already running out and while more has been sent, it seems pretty clear that the military did not get all it requested (which, by the way, is not necessarily decisive – generals tend to ask for more than they know they’ll get; sort of taking out insurance against politics, as it were). The real question is whether or not General Petraeus has the time and resources to secure victory?

I hope he does – losing in Afghanistan would be a catastrophe for us. But the clock on the wall continues to worry me. I’d feel much better if, taking advantage of the fracas, Obama were to set aside his self-imposed time limit. Unfortunately, I don’t see Obama as a man who remotely understands military reality, and thus the opportunity to re-commit ourselves to victory might be lost.

I wish luck and offer my prayers for General Petraeus and his command. He has been given the hardest job in the world, I have faith in his courage and capability – and now we’ll see what he can do.

The more I hear about her, the less I like her – and the more I figure we should go to the mat trying to derail her appointment to the Supreme Court – from Frank J. Gaffney via Catholic Exchange:

…this Supreme Court nomination offers a prism for examining the concerted and ominous campaign underway to bring Shariah to America, thanks to the troubling role Ms. Kagan played during her tenure as dean of Harvard’s Law School. In a speech on the Senate floor on June 16th, Sen. Sessions reflected on that role in noting a seemingly astonishing inconsistency in the nominee’s much-touted support of homosexual rights:

. . . Information has come to light suggesting that Ms. Kagan may…have been less morally principled in her approach than has been portrayed. Around the same time that Dean Kagan was campaigning to exclude military recruiters – citing what she saw as the evils of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – Harvard University accepted $20 million from a member of the Saudi Royal family to establish a center for ”Islamic Studies” and Shariah law…

Defenders of Kagan are saying that she had no responsibility for this – that it was Harvard, not Harvard Law School, which took the dirty money from the Saudis. But to be in any way connected with an institution tolerant of the violently homo-phobic Sharia law code while claiming you oppose military recruitment on mere grounds that they don’t allow openly gay service members? Seems to me – and to many – that her opposition to the recruitment stems more from anti-military animus than concern for gay rights.

But, there’s more – as the linked article goes on to note, Kagan has a role in Harvard Law’s work towards developing “Sharia compliant finance” – legal work being done to get our financial system in compliance with the moral strictures of Sharia. Imagine if anyone at Harvard had tried to get our financial system to be in accord with Catholic social teaching? You get the picture.

The Kagan which is emerging is a hard left ideologue – pro-gay when that can be used as a club against the US military, turning a blind eye to anti-gay actions when it advances the left’s multiculturalist agenda. Kagan is free to hold whatever views she pleases – but the Supreme Court of the United States is no place for a hard left ideologue.

We have the much better candidates, and they are determined to rescue our country from you:

Mr. Scott just won the GOP primary for the South Carolina 1st district – and win or lose this November (though I bet he wins), he is the future…you are the dead, tired and fading away past.

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=Xd2GkUSUyt

The growing arrogance of these cartels is fueled by the lack of resolve on the federal level in the United States. Convinced that we won’t do anything, they are bidding for complete control of the border – and as I’ve said, there is no such thing as an open border. Someone will control it – as we refuse to, the drug lords will.

By now, you have probably formed an opinion on the Obama/McChrystal sitiuation unfolding. Here are wy thoughts…

First, I agree that a General ought keep his personal views private.

Second, so far, everything I have heard that McChrystal or one of his aides has said that has been made public are accurate assessments of the Obama administration.  THe plain fact of the matter is that if Obama weren’t so incompetent McChrystal would have never had to make such comments.

Next, if McChrystal feels that certain restrictions and ROE placed upon him are hurting the mission, then those views must be expressed (though not publicly) and if they are not addressed and resolved he ought to resign.

Obama has to realize that even though he doesn’t want to fight a war on terror that that is exactly what we are engaged in. He needs to let those who know a lot more than he does do what they are supposed to do how they want to do it.

Obama summoning McChrystal to the White House was a display of ego-driven pettiness. This would have been better done via remote and out of publicly eye. Obama desire to show dominance once again makes us look weak.

But then again, most things Obama does makes us look weak. I am just surprised that Obama is gonna meet McChrystal at all, since I am sure he has a few tee times set up.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: And, of course, back when Bush was President, the MSM urged military criticism of the President. What a difference a Democrat in office can make, huh?

From Bloomberg:

A New Orleans federal judge lifted the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed by President Barack Obama following the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Drilling services shares jumped on the news…

…“The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium,” Feldman said in his 22-page decision. “The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”

Which is all exactly true and points out that Obama’s moratorium was the act of a man who likes to exercise power, but doesn’t know why or how it should be exercised.

UPDATE: Proving how clueless he is – or, alternately, how determined he is to please the environmentalists in front of November – Obama’s Administration will issue a new order banning drilling.

There is some evidence out there that we are not at all in good fiscal health, and the Democrats don’t want to let anyone find out:

House Democrats are readying an alternative budget measure that would set next year’s spending levels without requiring a vote on deficits.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.) said the alternative would be the “functional equivalent” of a full-fledged budget. But because it won’t be a traditional budget resolution, it will be silent on future deficits, which are expected to average nearly $1 trillion for the next decade…

I think its much worse than that – lots of little things piling up which make me think we’ve got a cash flow problem. Here’s the most recent I’ve seen – from the Nevada News Bureau:

A delay in federal payments to Nevada’s counties is not anticipated to cause any financial problems for the cash-strapped local governments, officials said in interviews last week.

Nevada and other western states were notified last Wednesday that Payment in Lieu of Taxes funds from the U.S. Department of Interior for fiscal year 2010 will be delayed until July, a move that was criticized by Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev…

To give an idea of the amount of money we’re talking about, Churchill County got $2 million dollars last year from this – and while the governments affected are playing down the problem (at least, as long as its only a delay from June to July), the fact remains that for some un-disclosed reason, Uncle Sam is unable to send a mere $2 million to Churchill County. This is in a budget of about $3 trillion dollars. Its like a regular person having to delay giving the street person a penny – how bad does your situation have to be before you can’t part with a single penny?

Do we have enough money coming through the US Treasury to meet current accounts and service the debt? Remember, if we miss even a single payment on our bonds there would be a financial crash such as the world has never seen. So, we can’t forgo even a penny of bond payments. We certainly can’t delay social security payments and there are several other things which if we stopped paying they would expose us as bankrupt. But if we simply don’t have the money, then something has to give…in this case, is it some payments regularly made to some counties? What else is being delayed? In a government as large as ours, there could be lots of things and it’d be weeks or months before the word got out.

I think, my friends, that things are quite a lot worse than they are letting on – and Democrats refusing to even pass a real budget is taken by me as confirmation of my suspicion.

Couldn’t cook up a sufficiently wicked brew of budget malfeasance for 2011, I guess – from Bloomberg:

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag plans to leave President Barack Obama’s Cabinet in July, before the White House begins preparing its next budget, administration officials said.

Orszag, 41, considered leaving his post as director of the Office of Management and Budget in April and stayed on after an appeal from the president, the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. Orszag’s decision to leave this summer will accelerate the process of picking a successor…

He’s just getting out while the getting is good – no one in their right mind wants to be minding the fiscal store when the 2010 budget deficit numbers are announced in October.

The first democRat deserts the sinking ship – there will be more.