Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Joining Colin Powell and other experts in declaring civil war in Iraq, Kofi Annan has come out stating, "Given the level of violence, the level of killing and bitterness and the way that forces are arranged against each other, a few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war; this is much worse."

In response, GW said this to Brit Hume, "Some would argue that the fact that 90 percent of the country -- let me just say this -- most of the country outside of the Baghdad area, is relatively peaceful, doesn't indicate a civil war as far as they`re concerned."

Gads, where to start. First off, Iraq has a population of about 28 million people and about seven million, or 25% of the country's population, live in the city of Baghdad. Iraq is about the size of California and that would be like 25% of the population in the U.S., or about 75 million, living in say Los Angeles. So I would imagine if violence and insurgency were to occur in LA with 1/4 of the country's population, it would be quite significant to say the least.

Of course, Bush is being misleading on purpose (right?), for even he has to know that much of Iraq -- when he talks of "90% of the country" -- is desert, uninhabitable and yes, "relatively peaceful." As is much of Arizona and New Mexico; lots of land, not as many people. And odds would greatly favor that if insurgents were to pick an area to attack and cause mayhem and unrest, it would be an area with 25% of the population and not a place like Montana, Idaho or North Dakota. (Duh).

But as you would expect, Bush is wrong even about violence occurring just within Baghdad. I recently wrote about how Al-Qaeda has infiltrated Anbar and are basically running things there. Just yesterday, a suicide car bomb struck in the northern city of Mosul, described as "some 400 km north of Baghdad, has long been a bastion of insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi security forces." 400 km is pretty far away from Baghdad. And the insurgency exists in southern Iraq, with Basra over 500 km away from Baghdad. Go ahead, Google various parts of Iraq, you'll come up with violence in places far away from Baghdad.

Junior continues to be way out of touch with facts or he's just lying. It's no wonder his father has begun to show the stress in public. Daddy likely feels the weight, the shame and dread, but not smirking GW. He continues to have a dream.

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