Breaking 5000?

Heh. With a little luck I could break 5000 views (wordpress-style views, that is) by 5 pm tomorrow. Pretty sure I can do it, if I just keep giving Dave a hard time.

UPDATE: 7 1/2 hours and 64 views to go!! (9:30 am, MST)

UPDATE II: 1 1/2 hours and 15 views to go!! (3:30 pm, MST) [Corrected - it said "11 1/2 hours" before]

UPDATE III: 1/2 hours and 5 views to go!!! (4:30 pm, MST)

UPDATE IV: Aw, phooey. Missed it by 5. Well, it’ll happen in the next 24 hours for sure, so I’ll just try to be patient.

UPDATE V: At last!! Triumph!!

Iraqi polls

Seems like whenever they poll Iraqis, they ask them how they think the government is doing, what do they think about the US, what are their biggest concerns, etc.

I wish they’d ask them: 1) their religious affiliation, and 2) whether they thought they could get along politically with the two other religions in Iraq. The results would be very illuminating, both as to the depths of the sectarian violence and the prospects for a peaceful resolution.

Instead we keep getting the “blame the US” poll questions.

The Star-Tribune goes out on the Lancet limb

The Star-Tribune has fallen in credibility even faster than the LA Times, and today’s editorial on reporting of civilian deaths in Iraq shows why. Relying on a small excerpt from the ISG report, they tell us:

But now comes the Iraq Study Group with an explanation for the discrepancies between the Johns Hopkins numbers [the infamous Lancet study - ed.] and other estimates: The Pentagon’s reporting system on civilian deaths systematically underreports violence in Iraq. How? “The standard for recording attacks,” the bipartisan group said, “acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases.”
…
Why are we not surprised? From the very beginning of the tragic Iraq adventure, the Bush administration has distorted the truth about pretty much everything, from weapons of mass destruction to Al-Qaida linkages to Iraq to the number of Iraqi civilians being killed. And in the process, the administration lied to itself, making sound policy choices almost impossible.

I’m agreeing with Alec Baldwin?

Just after slamming Alec Baldwin yesterday, I find that amidst a typically empty-headed screed at HuffPo, he actually wrote something I agree with:

Get rid of the CIA, which has outlived its usefulness and is an embarrassment to this great country, and rebuild and reform US intelligence capabilities to fight this new type of threat.

Reform of the intelligence agencies has been miniscule, even after events have proven our intelligence apparatus to be grossly inadequate, and after the CIA has shown itself to be a secret agency that can’t keep a secret. Maybe eliminating the CIA isn’t the right answer, but at this point I wouldn’t miss them.

And that concludes this brief interlude of humoring Alec Baldwin.

(via Instapundit and Winds of Change)

Putting some teeth in the UN

Just reflecting on the impotence of the UN – both in peacekeeping and in avoiding gridlock in the Security Council. Seems to me that we ought to require nations in the Security Council to pony up, say, 50,000 troops as part of their voting privileges. That would give the UN a sizeable peacekeeping force, and it would keep weenies like the French, Germans and Italians (who won’t allow their troops to serve in the more dangerous areas of Afghanistan) off the Security Council.

You shouldn’t get a vote if you’re doing nothing tangible to promote security.