Category: Current Affairs

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10,000 Wounded

The newest casualty figures from the Department of Defense (it updates the number of killed daily or as needed and generally gives a revised total for wounded in action every Tuesday) shows the number of wounded in battle since we went into Iraq has now surpassed 10,000 (that’s in addition to 1,340 dead, 1.049 of those killed in action as of today).

Of the 10,252 wounded to date, 4,856 were “WIA RTD” — wounded in action and returned to duty within 72 hours. The report that said 5,396 of the wounded did not return to duty within 72 hours. The Pentagon’s stats also show that about 95 percent of the wounded have been injured since Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” event on May 1, 2003. The Defense Department describes action in the period from that date to the present as “post-combat ops.” Doesn’t “post” mean “after”?

All Pentagon and media bashing aside, I’d say that TV and print outlets have done a generally awful job reporting on the wounded. You rarely come across even a simple weekly summary of how many troops have been wounded. And getting into the reality of the kinds of injuries the troops are suffering, what kind of care they’re getting, and how the services treat those who are disabled. It’s part of the real face of the war that most people just don’t get to see (though we do get to see lots of images of happy troops watching sporting events; there was another example last night with troops in Baghdad rooting for Virginia Tech during ABC’s telecast of the Sugar Bowl. I’ll bet anything we get a repeat during the USC-Oklahoma game, complete with rah-rah commentary from the political dimwits in the broadcast booth).

Of course, you can’t talk about our 10,000 wounded without considering the carefully unreported details of Iraqi casualties since the war began. Ideologically driven efforts like Iraq Body Count aside — which at this point appears to attribute all Iraqi deaths, even Iraqi police officers and soldiers killed by insurgents, to the United States — there’s really no authoritative source for these numbers or for details that might show important trends in the actions (for instance, the bloodbath among Iraqis that has unfolded in Mosul over the past couple of months).

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Tsunami Aid: Norway Number 1

Based on the stats in my earlier-posted list, here’s the per capita ranking for selected nations and their government contributions to the tsunami relief effort (it would be interesting to do the nation-by-nation stats on private contributions, too, but I need to get off my butt and so something resembling real work at some point today). And yes, that number for Norway is correct. The government in Oslo raised its initial pledge of 100 million Norwegian kroner (about $16.3 million) to 1.1 billion kroner ($180 million) (as reported in the English edition of Aftenposten). Norway’s population is just 4.6 million, so the per capita figure exceeds that of even the sparsely populated Number 1 donor in total aid, Australia). If the United States made a commitment at a similar rate to Norway’s, its aid figure would come to a little more than $11.5 billion.

(Just for fun, I’ve thrown in each country’s world ranking in per capita GDP from the CIA World Factbook; the rankings are in parentheses after each country’s per capita aid figure in U.S. dollars).

–Updated on 1/5/04 to reflect new aid commitments from Australia and Germany.

–Updated on 1/8/04 to reflect new aid commitments and add Kuwait, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland.

–Updated on 1/8/04 to add Finland and the Netherlands and update French aid total.

–Updated on 1/9/04 to reflect increased aid commitment from Finland.

–Updated on 1/11/04 to reflect increased aid commitment from Canada.



1. Norway: $39.13 (Per capita GDP rank: 2)

2. Australia: $37.82 (14)

3. Qatar: $29.76 (36)

4. Denmark: $14.11 (8)

5. Canada: $13.24 (11)

6. Switzerland: $13.00 (7)

7. Finland: $12.56 (22)

8. Sweden: $8.33 (24)

9. Germany: $8.17 (21)

10. United Arab Emirates: $8.00 (32)

11. Kuwait: $4.35 (47)

12. Japan: $3.91 (17)

13. Taiwan: $2.21 (31)

14. Netherlands: $2.09 (16)

15. Spain: $1.69 (34)

16. New Zealand: $1.68 (35)

17. United Kingdom: $1.61 (19)

18. European Union: $1.36 (26)

19. United States: $1.19 (3)

20. Saudi Arabia:$1.17 (69)

21. France: $1.05 (20)

22. China: $0.05 (120)

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Tsunami Bucks (Per Capita Edition)

Just because it appears to be a subject of interest based on searches reaching the information-laden Infospigot site, here’s a quick listing of some of the notable government tsunami aid pledges and how they break down into per capita amounts. I don’t have time to write a table, so the numbers are presented in a sort of unattractive (but still useful, I hope) fashion: The country name (with a link to a news source) is followed by the current announced aid commitment stated in U.S. dollars (I calculated exchanges using an online calculator at XE.com). The number in parentheses is the initial aid pledge, if known. The rest is self-explanatory: national populations are stated in millions and are linked to national government statistics sources where possible.

One conclusion I’m inclined to draw from the numbers is that most governments around the world, including ours, simply underestimated the magnitude of the disaster the region was dealing with. I’d say Japan and Norway were the early exceptions to that: Japan, perhaps, because of its familiarity with tsunamis and their effects and Norway because it was mindful of how many of its citizens were in the region. The sense that the event wasn’t initially seen as the catastrophe it was is reinforced by reading the transcript of Colin Powell’s State Department press briefing on Monday morning, more than 36 hours after the tsunamis struck. He actually led off with the head of USAID talking about the $15 million the United States was contemplating committing to the relief effort. But the reporters on hand were more interested in talking about Iraq and other subjects and never, as far as the record shows, asked any questions critical of the amount suggested.

–Updated 1/5/05 with increased aid commitments from Australia and Germany.

–Updated 1/8/05 to add statistics for the European Union, Kuwait, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.

–Updated 1/8/05 to add statistics for Finland and the Netherlands and update France’s aid total.

–Updated 1/9/05 to update Finland’s aid total (thanks, Tuomas).

–Updated 1/11/05 to reflect new Canadian aid (thanks, Jordon).

Australia: $764M ($15.6M). Population: 20.2. Per capita: $37.82

Canada: $425M ($3.3M). Population 32.1. Per capita: $13.24

China: $63M ($2.6M). Population: 1,300. Per capita: $0.05

Denmark: $76.2M ($1.8M). Population: 5.4. Per capita: $14.11

European Union: $618M ($30M). Population: 456.3. Per capita: $1.36

Finland: $65.3M ($4M). Population: 5.2. Per capita: $12.56

France: $64.6M ($0.135M). Population: 61.7. Per capita: $1.05

Germany: $674M ($1.35M). Population: 82.5. Per capita: $8.17

Japan: $500M ($30M). Population: 128. Per capita: $3.91

Kuwait: $10M. Population: 2.3. Per capita: $4.35

Netherlands: $34M ($2.6M). Population: 16.3. Per capita: $2.09

New Zealand: $6.9M. Population: 4.1. Per capita: $1.68.

Norway: $180M ($16.4M). Population: 4.6. Per capita: $39.13

Qatar:$25M. Population: .84. Per capita: $29.76

Saudi Arabia: $30M ($10M). Population: 25.6. Per capita: $1.17

Spain: $68M ($1.35M). Population: 40.3. Per capita: $1.69

Sweden: $75M ($0.75M). Population: 9. Per capita: $8.33

Switzerland: $96.2M. Population: 7.4. Per capita: $13.00

Taiwan: $50M ($5). Population: 22.6. Per capita: $2.21

United Arab Emirates: $20M. Population: 2.5. Per capita: $8.00

United Kingdom: $95.1M ($1.3M). Population: 59.6. Per capita: $1.61.

United States: $350M ($15M). Population: 295.2. Per capita: $1.19

(Source for statistics on earlier/initial aid offers are mostly from “Reuters Factbox: Nations pledge aid after Asia tsunami disaster” (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/110433536336.htm). Most press sources are now giving the initial United States commitment as $35 million, but they’re incorrect. The initial total offered by the State Department was $15 million and is detailed in a transcript of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s press briefing, along with the head of USAID, on December 27.)

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Sunday Satire

Pancakes

It’s another rainy day in Infospigot’s neighborhood. What better way to pass the time than with the Sunday papers, an occasional glance at TV football, and a plate full of pancakes (Kate was inspired by watching Alton Brown explain the history and science of flapjacks on the Food Network; you think I’m kidding, but the picture above is included to show I’m not). I struggled through The New York Times crossword. I read the obits in the Chronicle. And I happened across an awful opinion piece in the Chronicle’s Sunday “Insight” section.

The column, by former Wall Street Journal reporter G. Pascal (Greg) Zachary, is titled “India, Indonesia didn’t prepare for the worst.” It ventures to lecture India for spending money on developing nuclear weapons and Indonesia for diverting profits from its oil industry away from one of the provinces stricken by the December tsunami. That’s all fine. I guess governments everywhere could have more enlightened priorities. But gee, Mr. Zachary, where do you or any other American get off giving someone else a hard time for their weapons obsessions or economic greed or for ignoring their people’s vital needs? Naturally we’re the smartest, best (and best-looking!) people on Earth. But I’d think the Iraq fiasco, the national missile defense folly, the Enron scandal, health-care and pension crises and the incipient collapse of public education for the poor would lend us a sense of humility.

I was bugged enough that I wound up writing a letter to the section’s editors:

Editor:

G. Pascal Zachary’s piece (“India, Indonesia didn’t prepare for worst,” Jan. 2, 2005) almost fooled me. What I took at first to be hypocritical carping about the irresponsibility of Asian nations hit by the December tsunami turns out to be satire almost too subtle to contemplate. Zachary scolds India for, among other things, diverting precious resources into an arms race. He wags his finger at Indonesia for its greed in dividing the spoils from its oil industry. He indicts both governments for failing to adequately care for their citizens. Wow. Really hard-hitting stuff. For good measure, he throws in a swipe about India stealing U.S. jobs. As a contrast to such short-sighted selfishness, he offers us Americans, who “naturally … can see past their narrow self-interest.”

Of course, you have to look past a literal interpretation of Zachary’s words to glimpse their Swiftian brilliance. What Zachary’s really getting at is how India and Indonesia are merely aping the example of the United States (and other powers of South and Southeast Asia’s glorious imperial past) when they waste treasure on weaponry, put profits for the wealthy ahead of citizens’ welfare and pursue policies that say to their own people and the rest of the world “we couldn’t care less what you think.”

Congratulations on a masterpiece.

We’ll see if it runs. I’m sure my note is just one among many.

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Still Prevailing After All These Years

When our handsomely paid, and ruggedly handsome, White House resident-in-chief interrupted his vacation at the ranch in Crawford the other day to announce that the United States would be generous as heck in responding to the tsunami’s aftermath, he ended by saying, “We will prevail over this destruction.” More than just another run-of-the-mill knot-headed Bushism, the president has used one of his trademark phrases to signal that he’s identified the tsunamis and the plate tectonics that spawned them as evildoers. Now that he’s busted Saddam Hussein and built a model democracy in Iraq and shown Osama bin Laden who’s boss — well, one out of three ain’t bad — he’s gonna treat nature like the terrorist it truly is.

Just for old time’s sake, here’s a small sampling of the president’s earlier “we will prevail” declarations:

“Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others. Because this is America. This is who we are. This is what our enemies hate and have attacked. And this is why we will prevail.” — Weekly radio address, September 15, 2001. (Checking the White House site, this looks like the first time Bush uttered the phrase. Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary, had used it the day after the September 11 attacks in a briefing: “As the President also said in his remarks, this battle will take time and resolve; and, make no mistake, we will prevail.”

“If war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military — and we will prevail.” — State of the Union, January 28, 2003

“Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome but victory. My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.” — Announcing Iraq war had begun, March 19, 2003

From the beginning, we have known the effort would be long and difficult, and that our resolve would be tested. We know that sacrifice is unavoidable. We have seen victories in the decisive defeat of two terror regimes, and in the relentless pursuit of a global terror network. Yet the war on terror goes on. We will not be distracted, and we will prevail.” — Discussing progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, July 1, 2003.

“All nations of the world face a challenge and a choice. In continued acts of murder and destruction, terrorists are testing our will, hoping we will weaken and withdraw. Yet across the world, they are finding that our will cannot be shaken. Whatever the hardships, we will persevere. We will continue this war on terror until all the killers are brought to justice.And we will prevail.” — Weekly radio address, Aug. 23, 2003

“We’re going to prevailbecause, well, one we got a good strategy to deal with these killers. Two, I believe, by far the vast majority of Iraqis do understand the stakes, and do want their children to grow up in a peaceful environment, and do want their children going to a school, and do want to be able to live a free life that is prosperous. That’s what I believe. And I — recently, I was told by — for example, Bremer was telling me about a survey done by an American firm in Baghdad, for example; and it said that by far the vast majority of people understand that if America were to leave and the terrorists were to prevail in their desire to drive us out, the country would fall into chaos. And no one wants that.” — White House remarks, November 13, 2003.

“We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. (Applause.) We will prevail. We will win because our cause is just. We will win because we will stay on the offensive. And we will win because you’re part of the finest military ever assembled. (Applause.) And we will prevail because the Iraqis want their freedom. (Applause.)” — Thanksgiving speech to troops in Baghdad, November 27, 2003.

“And we are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring a future of hope, and the peace we all want. And we will prevail.“Nomination acceptance speech, September 2, 2004

“I also want to say to the American people that we’re at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail.” Responding to bin Laden statement, October 29, 2004

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Tsunami Bucks

The Amazing Tsunami Aid Turnaround continues: After embarrassing itself earlier this week by announcing the U.S. would commit $15 million to tsunami relief — equivalent to what we spend every 100 minutes on Iraq — the Bush administration upped the number first to $35 million (about four whole hours of Iraq money) and now to $350 million. OK, I won’t bother to translate that into Iraq terms, since doing that is an exercise in context and irony. Realistically, no one can yet put a price tag on just what recovery in southern and southeastern Asia will take. Lots of the money is going to come straight from ordinary folks who are moved to reach into their own pockets. You may or may not have a favored aid organization in mind. In this case (as in earlier disasters) Kate and I have given through the American Red Cross (which is also collecting for tsunami relief through Amazon, which says it has raised about $9.5 million from 125,000 individual donors so far).

That’s just one option, clearly. Network for Good has what looks like an excellent list of organizations participating in both immediate and long-term response to the disaster.

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Word of the Day: Rendition

The Washington Post published a fascinating account Monday of how the CIA has used a Gulfstream V executive jet and a non-existent front company operated by non-existent people to ferry terrorism suspects from various locales around the world for “rendition.” The article explains that rendition is an extralegal process in which the agency transports “captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.” In practice, this involves taking some suspects from countries that don’t condone torture to those that have no qualms about it in order to get intelligence information.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story was the role of amateurs — bloggers and citizens plane spotters around the world — in tracking this plane’s movements.

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Tsunami Aid: Quick Calculation

The United States made an initial pledge of $15 million in post-tsunami disaster relief. Incredibly generous compared to, say, France, which is offering 100,000 euros; but less open-handed compared to Japan, which is sending $30 million and other forms of help; aid from Australia and the Netherland (something like $7.5 million and $2 million, respectively) is far greater per capita than what we’re offering. But it’s really the thought that counts.

Here’s how our $15 million stacks up against the pile of money we’re ploughing into Iraq. The cost of our ongoing "bust a dictator, start a democracy" project is about $150 billion to date. That’s 10,000 times as much as we’re contemplating putting into the tsunami recovery effort. Wait, though: It’s taken us 21 months to spend all that Iraq money. In round figures, let’s say we’ve spent $7 billion a month on average on dictator busting. In round figures again, that breaks down to $230 million a day. We spend $15 million in Iraq every one hour and 40 minutes. So the conclusion is obvious: We’re shelling out about 15.33 times as much for one day of building our future Mesopotamian democracy as we’re willing to spend to help deal with a calamity that some are calling the costliest disaster in history.

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War Pimps

Beware of making too much of the world you see on television. With that caveat out of the way, let me proceed to make something out of my last hour’s viewing on CNN.

Tucker Carlson was sitting in for Aaron Brown — a faux journalist substituting for a faux journalist. As part of his quick tour of the news, he interviewed an official with an international aid organization about the problems facing the Asian tsunami zone. Then he went on, “thanks to the miracle of television,” as he put it, to a signoff segment focused on troops who are away from home this holiday season pursuing George Bush’s dream of democracy in Mesopotamia. Several troops were put in front of Department of Defense cameras in Iraq while CNN did the same with their families here in the States. I suppose it’s great to connect the troops to their families — hell, after getting an email from the Kerry campaign that called on supporters to give money to the USO so soldiers could call home over Christmas, I chipped in — but turning the reunion moment into video entertainment seemed cheap and demeaning (especially in the case of one soldier and his family subjected to an anchor’s relentless nudging to discuss what they were feeling). But hey, if these guys were game to go on camera, who am I to complain about how they were used by CNN’s producers?

Well, there’s this: The prevalence of feel-good images from the guys who are out “defending our freedom” — during the holidays, during the World Series, even during on our Election Day — hits me as a particularly loathsome kind of propaganda. Especially when the news-media purveyors have so largely excluded more troubling images of the human cost of the war to both our troops and the Iraqi populace. And especially when the big media have failed so utterly to explicitly examine whether this whole war has anything to do with defending our freedom.

So instead, we get more messages home from the front, more messages to encourage us to support the troops no matter what the hell we’ve sent them there to do; all messages that appear to add up to the bigger message that our intentions our good and that darn it, we need to stay the course. That’s not news and information anymore. It’s a form of pimping for the guys who set this whole mess in motion.

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‘Let’s Stay in Iraq … for a Month’

A remarkable human-in-the-street story in The New York Times on Wednesday about how the American public feels about the war. The story cites another poll that illustrates doubts about what the whole thing is about: This time, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll that shows 47 percent of respondents feel the war is going worse than it was a year ago, 32 percent think it’s about the same, and 20 percent think it’s going better than it was then. Those 20 percent must be on antidepressants.

The article is full of quotes from people who mostly sound resigned to the thing just dragging on the way it is now. One guy, identified as a cotton farmer in Texas, opines that opinion polls and public debate about the war are aiding and abetting the enemy. Not a single person comes out and says that they thought the war was a good idea to begin with. Most striking to me was one woman, a U.S. Army civilian employee in Virginia, who is quoted as saying she supports the troops’ presence in Iraq now and backs Bush’s plan. But look at the way she qualifies her support:

” ‘I think we should stay through the elections. I support the president’s plan up to there. But if we’re going to focus on Iraq without support of other nations, I see the violence increasing. I can’t see a democratic Iraq. So what are we doing there?’ ”

This is another way of saying, “I can stand for this for another five weeks.” How many people like this are out there, both conflicted and just about at the end of their rope?