Death Threats for Publishing Report That Surge Has Cut US Mi

Politics International Politics
21

Drudge still not saying anything about “death threats”? No? Just curious… OK, looks like this story is simply yet another of Rush’s fabrications.

22

Iraq Casualty Count shows:

Coalition Deaths
US UK Other Total AVG Days

3-2007 59 1 0 60 2.86 21
2-2007 80 3 1 84 3 28
1-2007 83 3 0 86 2.77 31
12-2006 112 1 2 115 3.71 31
11-2006 69 6 2 77 2.57 30
10-2006 106 2 2 110 3.55 31
9-2006 72 3 2 77 2.57 30
8-2006 65 1 0 66 2.13 31
7-2006 43 1 2 46 1.48 31
6-2006 61 0 2 63 2.1 30
5-2006 69 9 1 79 2.55 31
4-2006 76 1 5 82 2.73 30
3-2006 31 0 2 33 1.06 31

icasualties.org/oif/

So far, Feb/Mar seem to be slightly above average

23

That’s the strange thing. First off, I can’t really say that I’ve seen a drop in casualties since the “surge” but I definitely don’t see anything shoring up Rush’s wild tales of how Drudge was supposedly given “death threats” for suggesting the surge was lowering troop casualties.

This would not be the first time we’ve seen this done in the Republican playbook – just make up some utter fabrication and then try to smear people in a “man bites dog” sort of way. The basic notion appears to try to make persons against the war appear insincere in their concerns by showing that they are actually “in favor of” violence – the basis for such claims is maybe one lone nutter who is unrepresentative of the whole or, as appears to be in this case, nobody at all.

This can be differentiated from true inconsistencies:

  1. The tendency for many Republican politicians to claim they’re “pro life” but then run the electric chairs on overtime in their states. (There are a lot of pro-life Catholics, for example, who take the whole issue consistently – but then they’re trying to answer for their views to God and not an electorate.)

  2. The tendency for Republican politicians to claim they “support the troops” while voting repeatedly to freeze or cut funding for our overwhelmed VA hospital network, and (most recently) vote to allow sending troops to Iraq without adequate training, body armor and other equipment.

I suggest that unless there is any statement from Drudge within the next 24 hours acknowledging a death threat, we change the name of the thread to something along the lines of “Is the Surge Working?” That would be worthy of a debate.