unreality and untruths and 70 9/11s a year

Eugene Robinson puts it better than me in talking about the Cheney-Bush refusal to acknowledge reality in Iraq. He accuses them of living on a planet of unreality.

Robinson is right, but there is another element to this. Cheney-Bush and their acolytes also live on a planet constructed out of their own lies. They lie, lie, lie. Then they lie some more. They think if they lie enough about Iraq that eventually people will believe them that things are just nifty over there because the Big Lie has worked for them before.

One early example of course was over the Florida elections. Then Republicans' and Fox News' (but I repeat myself) lies about Saddam's alleged involvement in the attacks of September 11 were, along with their mistakes about Iraq's WMD capacity and lies about secular/nationalist Saddam's willingness to furnish such weapons to religious terrorists or to attack the US directly, were very effective in drumming up a pro-war frenzy that made it very difficult for sane people to oppose them (witness the backlash against Brent Scowcroft, who opposed the attack in an op-ed in August 2002).

Anyhow, Robinson notes what Iraq's interim PM said on BBC Sunday:

Here is reality: The Bush administration's handpicked interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, told the BBC on Sunday, "We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point. . . . We are in a terrible civil conflict now."

Let's say it's 50 people a day. Over a year, that is over 18,000 people. If Iraq had the same population as the United States and suffered proportional losses every day, that would be over 200,000 people a year. In other words, more casualties in a week EVERY WEEK OF THE YEAR than the US suffered on September 11. I think that might qualify as a civil war, don't you?

But again, Shotgun Cheney on Meet the Press Sunday said there WAS no civil war and that his statement almost a year ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes" -- were "basically accurate and reflect reality."

So, is Cheney deluded, lying, or both? I say both.