The Dish

That’s the fraction of Americans who pay no income taxes at all – an all-time record. Another reason why the president, in my view, should have pushed tax reform rather than social security reform as his primary second term objective. Too late now, of course. The tax prof explains.

Yes, its important. But here’s some perspective: new research has found that Europe was as warm between 800 and 1300 as it is today. Then we got a Little Ice Age. Just solar variability.

Sorry for the lack of blogging this weekend. We were moving to the Cape for the next three months; and then spent the weekend doing the usual fix-up of the unwinterized condo. It couldn’t be more beautiful this morning: the tide creeping in, and as I look above the laptop, the sun sparkling on the surface of the water. Lucky man I am.

Dave Cullen asks a question that has always bugged me. It’s pretty obvious that many movie actors do a steroid cycle for some roles. I have no problems with that. I think steroids should be legal for adults. But isn’t there a double standard here?

Here’s an argument that we have plenty of troops to do what we need to in Iraq. Count me unconvinced. One responsibility any invading army has, it seems to me, is to retain order. Once we take over authority, we have a moral obligation to ensure that mayhem isn’t the result. We didn’t simply fail to do this from the fall of Baghdad onward, we fully intended to fail. There wqas no plan to restore civil order after victory – and 12,000 Iraqis have died as a result. I don’t think anyone can seriously claim that the insurgency didn’t gain enormously from this power vacuum. Meanwhile, another alert reader queries my analogy to the successful British pacification of an Iraqi insurgency in 1920, as highlighted by Niall Ferguson. In Niall’s words,

How, then, did the British crush the insurgency of 1920? Three lessons stand out. The first is that, unlike the American enterprise in Iraq today, they had enough men. In 1920, total British forces in Iraq numbered around 120,000, of whom around 34,000 were trained for actual fighting. During the insurgency, a further 15,000 men arrived as reinforcements. Coincidentally, that is very close to the number of American military personnel now in Iraq (around 138,000). The trouble is that the population of Iraq was just over three million in 1920, whereas today it is around 24 million. Thus, back then the ratio of Iraqis to foreign forces was, at most, 23 to 1. Today it is around 174 to 1. To arrive at a ratio of 23 to 1 today, about one million American troops would be needed.

Here’s my correspondent’s argument against Ferguson:

They didn’t have native security forces then, nearly all of those men were from the Indian Army. The US has a couple of hundred thousand native allies. I think you need to add those to your number.
In addition, the British problems extended from Basra to Kurdistan – every wild character, Shiite, Sunni and Kurd, was up in arms. The US has only a subset of that population to worry about. US deployments are only in a limited area of the country.
The British were also forced to maintain large inflexible garrisons because it was terrifically difficult to move around in Iraq at the time. Their force utilization was very inefficient.
Last, the US never had the force structure to maintain many more in Iraq long term, under a peacetime economy and mobilization scheme, than it now does. The US economy would be in pretty bad shape with a “full” deployment as you desire. It isn’t prudent for longer term US strategic purposes to take an economic hit. A draft is a bad idea. What you have is what you are going to get. The solution, as it always was, is Iraqis. It will take time.

My correspondent has a point. And this thing is still winnable. But running the war in this way risks something significant: that the costs and extra time involved in fighting such a campaign on the cheap will eventually wear on Americans’ patience. We’re already seeing that with falling support for the war. Moreover, the administration told us that this was a critical venture for our very survival. If it is that critical, why take the kind of under-manning risks we’ve taken? If it isn’t critical, then why did you tell us it was? My only fear all along is that we might fail. I cannot understand why this administration would have made decisions that made this process so much harder than it might have been. If they’d called for a draft after 9/11 or for a massive influx of new soldiers, don’t you think the American people would have agreed? Instead, they aimed low and placed a great deal of reliance on hope and luck. Hope and luck can indeed win wars. But actual soldiers are more reliable.

Terry Moran is actually asking this administration to back up its statements. Can you believe that? Money quote:

Q Scott, is the insurgency in Iraq in its ‘last throes’?

McCLELLAN: Terry, you have a desperate group of terrorists in Iraq that are doing everything they can to try to derail the transition to democracy. The Iraqi people have made it clear that they want a free and democratic and peaceful future. And that’s why we’re doing everything we can, along with other countries, to support the Iraqi people as they move forward….

Q But the insurgency is in its last throes?

McCLELLAN: The Vice President talked about that the other day — you have a desperate group of terrorists who recognize how high the stakes are in Iraq. A free Iraq will be a significant blow to their ambitions.

Q But they’re killing more Americans, they’re killing more Iraqis. That’s the last throes?

McCLELLAN: Innocent — I say innocent civilians. And it doesn’t take a lot of people to cause mass damage when you’re willing to strap a bomb onto yourself, get in a car and go and attack innocent civilians. That’s the kind of people that we’re dealing with. That’s what I say when we’re talking about a determined enemy.

Q Right. What is the evidence that the insurgency is in its last throes?

McCLELLAN: I think I just explained to you the desperation of terrorists and their tactics.

Q What’s the evidence on the ground that it’s being extinguished?

McCLELLAN: Terry, we’re making great progress to defeat the terrorist and regime elements. You’re seeing Iraqis now playing more of a role in addressing the security threats that they face. They’re working side by side with our coalition forces. They’re working on their own. There are a lot of special forces in Iraq that are taking the battle to the enemy in Iraq. And so this is a period when they are in a desperate mode.

Q Well, I’m just wondering what the metric is for measuring the defeat of the insurgency.

McCLELLAN: Well, you can go back and look at the Vice President’s remarks. I think he talked about it.

Q Yes. Is there any idea how long a ‘last throe’ lasts for?

McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve….

Is there some metric for when the truth is in its “last throes”?

Bush is more genuinely liberal, when it comes to elections in the Islamic world. Norm Geras explains.

TWIN POWER: We thought we had a dynasty problem? Check out Poland.

The evidence mounts.

RED CHINA: I’ve always liked that soubriquet – and it remains true.

Triumph interviews Michael Jackson supporters. (Mad props: Jonah.)

Some of you have emailed me to say that I’m misinterpreting Kos. Here’s the argument:

“The torture that was so bad under Saddam, is equally bad under U.S. command” does not mean “Saddam and the US torture the same amount” but rather “torture is just as wrong under US command as under Saddam’s command”.

The sentence, when re-read, is indeed unclear and could be read either way, I think. Well: Kos can clear it up. All he need say is that the torture that has occurred under the U.S., while nothing like as extreme or as widespread as under Saddam, is still reprehensible. I look forward to his clarification on these lines and will happily link to it if it appears and withdraw his award nomination.