Bloodless Coup

How else do you measure a civil war but by counting the number of those dying this way? Or did you just take the word of some politician or academic or media elite without looking at the numbers? Your silly linkee seems to think we don't keep track of the total numbers of dead, we do, how else would the military know they numbered more than 2600? All the LA Times is saying is that they're focusing on a particular subset of the facts, not that total attacks are at their lowest rate in a year. But when half of Washington says we should leave Iraq because it's a civil war, what else can we do but trust those corrupt politicians? Oh, yes, we can measure and see if they're self serving liars.

But Bush is an idiot who doesn't care about facts, right? So why is he collecting them? If we had a 20% decline in the number of racially motivated murders in our country, wouldn't that be something good? Of course not for Jackson or Sharpton, but I'm sure no Democrats would ever exploit a racial divide for political gain.

I really can't see what your argument is here. We (no, not Bush - but the government, the one you are maligning in another thread) collect facts. Ummm yeah. And ... why is that relevant to the point of the link? The argument there is that the administration (this would be Bush and company) are basing their policies and arguments off skewed facts (a subset clearly designed in a way to hide the larger "reality") - which we know are skewed as even our the Bush government collects broader knowledge. Now remind me how setting massively expensive life and death policies off skewed facts is a good thing? Or knowly obscuring national debates with ridiculously contrived, self-serving data - is that good?

"The argument there is that the administration (this would be Bush and company) are basing their policies and arguments off skewed facts (a subset clearly designed in a way to hide the larger 'reality') - which we know are skewed as even our the Bush government collects broader knowledge."

Look, I hate to burst your Bush lives in a bubble balloon, but they have both the facts about civil war and the others, so it's difficult for me to see the skew here. Your favorite Dems' argument is that we have to leave Iraq because it's a civil war. But the lamented lacking Sunnis killing Sunnis numbers and Shiites killing Shiites data are as relevant to whether there's an Iraqi civil war as black on black and white on white crime is to whether there's a race war in America. Why is it so difficult to admit that the so called civil war has gotten a lot better in the last six months, even though the surge didn't reach full strength until a couple weeks ago?

If we get a handle on violence between political groups, it may not appear like a big deal to you, but it's a lot easier for different political groups to work together when their group isn't killing as many of your group.

Also, icasualties.org lists civilian Iraqi deaths based on news reports as 7,500 for the last five months and 10,500 for the five months before that. In truth, of course, we really shouldn't start counting until August, but your friends in Congress want to get our troops out before we see if they've actually made a difference, so who's really living in a bubble and can't stand for the truth to intrude?

Gosh I don't know - I'd say the people who are twisting the data.

And you keep equating "Bush" with "they" - the US government might have all kinds of data. That does not mean that Bush does. There's plenty of evidence that while he's not a dumb guy he's often very poorly informed. There've been years of stories on that. But him personally lacking data is less my point than people who clearly do know better using skewed data to make their argument to the public - which they are doing.

If you mean he doesn't pick up the New York Times and read stories about how he's an idiot, I'd say he definitely missed that one. To give Binky a little joy, I'll throw in a jab. You think Bush is uninformed? Clinton didn't even know he had sexual relations with that woman. Al Gore didn't know that the Buddhist Temple was finance related. Janet Reno thought the children released after the Waco attack had been beaten and sexually abused. Ron Brown didn't know he might survive the plane crash just to get shot in the head.

That's just a ridiculous response. Plus a weird hit at the New York Times - given that many New York Times stories are based on executive branch information and leaks and that for several years there you had Cheney and Chalabi's BFF writing the most prominent NYT stories on Iraq.

No, what I mean is that there is a gigantic amount of data now, mostly from administration officials, showing that Bush is so incurios that it should make your jaw drop, and that lots of information is kept from the president (which he seems to be fine with). He generally isn't interested in learning much deeply, and isn't interested in learning much a lot that conflicts with his preexisting perceptions.

While I do appreciate your use of BFF, let us not forget the most famous administration leaker to be Richard Armitage who wasn't BF anything with Cheney or Bush. And don't you see the psychology here? Let's say I work for Bush, and I have an agenda and the President has his own idea about how to proceed so he doesn't ask me questions about my agenda, ergo he's incurious. But that's only from a narcissistic POV. This President isn't a micromanager because that's not his job. And what was that Leo Strauss text you read, or are you not interested in attending to what conflicts with your "preexisting perceptions"?

Change my preexisting assumptions - Not if there are tenuous assumptions and logical holes, no. I'm perfectly happy to change my preexisting perceptions if I learn better though. I did used to be a Republican after all.

And you've got to let that Armitage thing go. It's embarrassing. You're not that dumb.

And the president's job involves nothing more than ... listening to his heart? If he's uninformed and can't manage the government hmmmm personally I think that will limit his ability to do his job.