Here’s a classic:
Militants ship a nuclear bomb into a U.S. port and ravage an entire city. More than the plot of a Tom Clancy thriller, it is the ultimate nightmare for many U.S. officials, ports and businesses.
So even if the, er, “militants” detonate a nuke against civilians, they’re still not “terrorists.” What do they have to do to get some respect around here?
BUSH = LENIN: A new wrinkle on the Hitler paradigm.
A SILENT GENOCIDE: Noam Chomsky tries to deny he once predicted humanitarian catastrophe if the U.S. pursued the war in Afghanistan. Damian Penny doesn’t let Chomsky get away with it. Meanwhile, in the Hindsight Check watch, it’s worth checking out the U.N.’s predictions about the Iraq war, back in December 2002. Among the confident statements:
“It is estimated that the nutritional status of some 3.03m people countrywide will be dire and that they will require therapeutic feeding [according to UNICEF estimates]. This consists of 2.03m severely and moderately malnourished children under 5 and one million pregnant women” [para 27]
“It is estimated that there will eventually be some 900,000 Iraqi refugees requiring assistance, of which 100,000 will be in need of immediate assistance, [according to UNHCR]” [para 35]. An estimated 2 million people will require some assistance with shelter [para 33]. For 130,000 existing refugees in Iraq “it is probable that UNHCR will initially be unable to provide the support required” [para 36]
It’s worth remembering that, for all the problems we have now in Iraq, they are minuscule compared to the problems many anti-war groups predicted.
The Dish 