…the war goes on and on and on…
Sometime last week we hit the 5th anniversary of our Glorious Experiment in Iraq. It wasn’t mentioned here, but not because we forgot. We were simply too bitter, too weary, to make any sort of fuss.
On Easter Sunday, we reached a new milestone: 4,000 US [...]

We’ve been told that yes, Iraq is a mixed bag but we’re finally making some progress. Well guess what.
The war has come up in debates, but in a rather perfunctory way: so far, it’s been anything but the defining issue of the campaign season. I am the millionth person to make this [...]

Suicide rates go up 20%, while attempted suicide/self-injury rates jump sixfold

More details to be found here.

But you knew that.
The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit center for investigative journalism, finds that in the two years after 9/11, the Bush administration made at least 935 false statements to justify military action.

Neocons like to roll their eyes and claim, in exhausted, put-upon voices, that “everyone thought that Iraq had weapons of mass [...]

My God, can you imagine what the numbers would be if we didn’t have all those yellow ribbon magnets?

I haven’t fully digested this piece, but it seemed important enough to warrant immediate transfer to the Daily Briefing. The upshot: many, many more war U.S. veterans commit suicide daily than die in hostile action [...]

Festum omnium sanctorum
For a goodly portion of the world, November 1st is All Saint’s Day. A Holy Day of Obligation, it calls upon all Catholics to celebrate and honor those who, after death, have achieved the “beatific vision”: the perfect happiness found in beholding God face to face. November 2nd is designated as [...]

Today’s Reality Check
This weekend, General Patreaus announced that Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been disrupted to such an extent that it “no longer operates in large numbers in any neighborhood of the capital.” Which is wonderful news.
…And totally meaningless, if you live in Diyala. Today someone rode a bicycle–almost certainly manufactured in Iran!–into a [...]

Across the country, we are running out of water. Water. Today in California, we find that we are running out of firefighters. And around the world, to differing degrees, we are running out of oil. According to The Guardian we hit peak oil in 2006 and output will continue to fall [...]