or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
February 29, 2012
You Are Not Not Mistaken
In one of the Stratfor emails released by Wikileaks, George Friedman, the head of Stratfor, writes this after someone has mentioned Pearl Harbor:
...while we are at it a moment to remember those that fell at pearl 69 years ago today wouldn't be out of place.If I'm not mistaken more americans died at pearl than died in iraq. Not trivializing the latter. Simply highlighting the former.
That was December 7, 2010. I can't claim that I keep a 100% accurate running total in my head of the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, but reading that I realized there's no way it could be correct. And it's not.
4,430 U.S. soliders had died in Iraq when Friedman wrote his email. If you add the 256 U.S. contractors, it's 4,686. 2,388 Americans (including civilians) were killed at Pearl Harbor. So about half as many.
This isn't the biggest thing in the world. But given the embarrassing right-wing gobbledygook that fills most of the other leaked Stratfor emails, it certainly suggests that these bozos tailor reality to their preferred worldview before it even gets out of their brains. (Also note that none of Friedman's employees realized he was wrong—or if they did, they didn't bring it up. Neither of these is something you'd want from "intelligence analysts.")
In other words, they really ARE like the CIA.
—Jon Schwarz
Posted at February 29, 2012 10:26 PMAh, but in fact he's 'hyper-right' in that, pig-like, he found an acorn; many, many more Americans were killed in the initial Japanese attack on the US than in Iraq's.
Posted by: Gridlock at March 1, 2012 03:11 AMAlways and forever, American deaths are the only ones that count.
Posted by: Rosemary Molloy at March 1, 2012 06:47 AMWorld's full-o-liars. To be effective ya gotta sell that lie to YOURSELF first.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at March 1, 2012 11:53 AMthere were many more Americans killed in Iraq besides US military and contractors. One was killed just this week - a teacher. Marla Ruzika and Tom Fox were two more that easily come to mind.
But there is no doubt - Americans are far better at killing than being killed.
Posted by: Susan at March 3, 2012 07:15 PM
