Oh, right. Dead kids.
Atrios asks, "How many US soldiers have died so far this month in Iraq? As always, the point is not to give the right answer (easily found if you know where to look), but your gut answer given what you've seen/read on the news." Thinking I'm on top of the game, I answered, "19."

Wrong wrong wrong.

The correct answer is 46, through 9/15.

In honor of my stupidity, I've added the casualty count sites for both US/coalition and Iraqi civilians. icasualties.org also has a good news feed of all things military we're just not seeing elsewhere. All of it is from reliable news sources (AP, Reuters, etc.) but not being published widely. I realize hurricanes are upon us, but not everywhere, cheeze!

And let's not forget that even members of Bush's own party are now slamming him* for his mismanagement of the war:

Senators slam administration on Iraq

Among those harshly criticizing the White House at a hearing were the two top Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Of the $18.4 billion Congress approved last year for Iraqi reconstruction, only $1.1 billion has been spent because of violence and other problems. Hagel called that record "beyond pitiful and embarrassing; it is now in the zone of dangerous."

Kerry isn't leaving it alone either:

Kerry Accuses Bush Of Dishonesty on Iraq

As part of twin strikes on Bush's credibility on the war and the economy, Kerry said the president's failures in Iraq have complicated efforts to bring U.S. troops home sooner and have created large swaths of Iraq "where there are terrorists where they were not before."
...
Kerry said the onus is on Bush to present a plan for winning in Iraq. "What you ought to be doing, and what everybody in America ought to be doing today, is not asking me. They ought to be asking the president: What's your plan?" Kerry told Imus. "What's your plan, Mr. President, to stop these kids from being killed?"

Wading back into the dispute over his antiwar protests after serving in Vietnam, Kerry showed no signs of offering the apology his critics are seeking for comments he made about war crimes and atrocities more than three decades ago. "Look, I went, I did my duty, I came back, I saw what I saw, and I told the truth," he said. "If some people have trouble with that still, I am sorry about it."

You go get 'em, John.

*by "him", I mean the fleshy incarnation that walks around with the name George Bush, but is really an incubus created in laboratories deep below the RNC.

- posted by Cynthia @ 10:36 AM | | | Link |