Antiwar.com Blog

Misleading headlines were abound today:

200 US deaths in Afghanistan

U.S. death toll in Afghanistan hits 200

The real total casualty count for Operation Enduring Freedom has been above 200 since late June of 2005. The discrepancy lies in a qualifier lacking in every article: 200 US troops have died in combat since the beginning of operations in Afghanistan. Here is just one example of the 40+ non-combat deaths. Couple this with the total killed in Iraq and over 2100 US troops have died — in and out of combat — since late 2001. Are we winning yet?

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Glenn Reynolds gets the Afterthought of the Day award for this post. In related news, Birmingham Baron Michael Jordan also played basketball in Chicago.

Not yet, but you had better keep an eye on me, she says:

The safety of the president and the country was put at risk, and it may have been due in part to the blinders of political correctness and complacency. If it means now that the White House will be applying extra scrutiny to naturalized Americans of Filipino descent working at the top levels of government and in the military, well, yes, I support that. It’s obviously overdue. And, as I argued in my last book, it’s just one small step towards the kind of national security profiling we should have introduced aggressively after 9/11. But didn’t.

Emphasis and hyperlink mine. Pray tell, what would be a medium-sized step?

Tony Blair’s government, its mendacity slipping the surly bonds of earth, embarks on a campaign against meteorological defeatism:

It is goodbye to those miserable showers and isolated storms. Prolonged sunshine is expected under new “positive” forecast guidelines issued by the Meteorological Office. …

There is no need to dwell on a “small chance of showers” when “mainly dry” tells a better story. If there are “localised storms” then it must be “dry for most”. Clouds over Manchester mean generally clear visibility for motorway drivers. …

In some cases forecasters should simply reverse the order of events, placing a “small chance of showers” at the end of the sentence if Britain is expected to be “mostly dry”.

This is based on research suggesting that viewers with short attention spans are more likely to absorb the good news, if it is relevant to them, and filter out the bad. …

Who says the warbloggers haven’t left their mark on the world?

Via.

Pentagon Analyst Pleads Guilty to Passing U.S. State Secrets

White House Spy Linked to Coup