Later On

From a very good column by Glenn Greenwald:

… The Associated Press’ Standards Editor, Tom Kent,issued a memorandum to AP editors and reporters instructing them not to use this White-House-created formulation that "combat operations in Iraq are over," on the simple ground of inaccuracy:

Whatever the subject, we should be correct and consistent in our description of what the situation in Iraq is. This guidance summarizes the situation and suggests wording to use and avoid.

To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months. Iraqi security forces are still fighting Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents.  . . . .

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over. President Obama said Monday night that "the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country."

However, 50,000 American troops remain in country. Our own reporting on the ground confirms that some of these troops, especially some 4,500 special operations forces, continue to be directly engaged in military operations. These troops are accompanying Iraqi soldiers into battle with militant groups and may well fire and be fired on.

In addition, although administration spokesmen say we are now at the tail end of American involvement and all troops will be gone by the end of 2011, there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

Our stories about Iraq should make clear that U.S. troops remain involved in combat operations alongside Iraqi forces, although U.S. officials say the American combat mission has formally ended. We can also say the United States has ended its major combat role in Iraq, or that it has transferred military authority to Iraqi forces. We can add that beyond U.S. boots on the ground, Iraq is expected to need U.S. air power and other military support for years to control its own air space and to deter possible attack from abroad.

The ability of the Pentagon to shape coverage through controlling access, offering embedding, and doling out exclusives is too well-known and well-documented by now to require much discussion.  The problem, however, is that it remains irresistibly enticing for many media outlets to submit to it.  The fact that NBC/MSNBC was the only television news outlet with video of the "last combat brigade rolling out of Iraq" was a major coup.  The only way that coup matters — the only way the journalists covering this event "exclusively" can feel as though they’re doing something important — is if they vest the event with historic significance, accomplished by touting it as "the end of America‘s Iraq combat mission," exactly the message the administration wanted disseminated.

The fact that this phrase — "the end of America‘s Iraq combat mission" — is more propagandistic than anything gave no pause.  The withdrawal of 100,000 troops from that country since Obama’s inauguration is not insignificant, and it’s a good thing that he’s adhered to the withdrawal schedule.  But, as Landay explained, 50,000 troops is a huge number — it’s what Rumsfeld originally envisioned as the occupying force to be used three months after the invasion — and it’s inevitable that they will be in combat.  And that’s to say nothing of the large number of private-militias which remain — paid for by American citizens — as well as the so-called "private army" which the State Department is currently assembling, to be deployed in that country.  That’s why AP refuses to use these misleading terms "even if they come from senior officials."  That, and because they weren’t the ones gifted with the "worldwide exclusive" coverage by the Obama administration and its Pentagon.

Take a look.

Isn’t it amazing how the free market and big business systematically destroy our world? Quirin Schiemeier reports in Nature News:

The humble Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) bears a heavy burden. It may be just a small, shrimp-like crustacean, but its sheer abundance makes it one of the largest protein sources on Earth, eagerly sought by fish, penguins, whales — and man.

Ecologists are now warning that the rapid growth in krill fishing is adding to the pressure of environmental changes threatening the creatures, and are calling for better monitoring and precautionary management of krill fisheries.

The global fish-farming industry is increasingly relying on krill-based fish feed, and enzymes and chemicals derived from krill are included in a number of dietary and medical products. Last year, for example,Aker Biomarine, an Oslo-based company specializing in harvesting and processing Antarctic krill in the Southern Ocean, upgraded its krill harvesting vessel, the Saga Sea, to boost its catch. In the first half of 2010 it produced 8,600 tonnes of krill meal for the aquaculture market, up from 6,200 tonnes during the whole 2009 catch season. The total krill catch this season is expected to be 150,000–180,000 tonnes, exceeding last year’s total by about 40%.

In May, Aker Biomarine’s krill fishing was certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a London-based organization that aims to promote sustainable fishing practices by allowing catch from MSC-certified fisheries to be labelled as such (see ‘Grabbing a bite’). The Pew Environment Group, an environmental advocacy group based in Washington DC, has objected to this, arguing that fishing for fishmeal should not be eligible for MSC certification. The row will come to a head at the October meeting of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), an international body responsible for managing the fisheries in the Southern Ocean.

One issue for debate will be the CCAMLR’s annual catch limit of 3.47 million tonnes in the Atlantic-bordering section of the Southern Ocean, the main fishing ground for Antarctic krill. "Current krill management fails to take account of the subtleties of the ecosystem," says Volker Siegel, a marine biologist at the Institute for Sea Fisheries in Hamburg, Germany, and member of the European Union’s CCAMLR delegation. Siegel says that rather than setting an ocean-wide limit, krill fisheries should be regulated on a smaller scale, because much of the fishing is limited to a few sites.

Another worry is the number of fishing vessels being deployed in the Southern Ocean. Norway is now operating three ships, for example, and China is expected to rapidly increase its krill fishing after sending its first vessel this year. "If China starts fishing in a big way, catch will expand rapidly, outstripping our ability to orderly manage it," says Steve Nicol, a marine ecologist with the Australian Antarctic Division in Kingston, Tasmania, who advises the Australian government on krill fisheries.

Researchers suspect that Antarctic krill are also feeling the effect of climate change. Krill larvae feed on algae living on the bottom of sea ice, which is rapidly dwindling around the Antarctic Peninsula. According to one estimate, the number of krill in the Southern Ocean may have dropped by 80% since the 1970s. But "there is no definite answer as to how the krill responds to warming", says Nicol. It is also unclear whether krill stocks are transient or fixed to given areas, and how many live deeper than 200 metres, below the most heavily fished and studied region of the ocean.

Mandatory scientific observers on board all krill fishing vessels — as is common practice in all other Antarctic fisheries — could help to answer these questions, Nicol says. Scientists are welcome on board the Saga Sea, but Japanese and South Korean ship owners are resistant to the idea. While there is still so much uncertainty about krill populations, "we must not allow the fishery to expand too quickly", says Nicol. "We don’t want to get in a situation where we have to tell people to get their boats out because we allowed them to catch too much, as has happened in other fisheries."

Compost can be deadly.

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

I’ve been thinking more and more about emergence, and I just ordered a few books to further my knowledge (admittedly skimpy). Here’s how I conceive it now. When I speak of emergence, I mean "strong emergence":

Systems can have qualities not directly traceable to the system’s components, but rather to how those components interact, and one is willing to accept that a system supervenes on its components, then it is difficult to account for an emergent property’s cause. These new qualities are irreducible to the system’s constituent parts (Laughlin 2005). The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This view of emergence is called strong emergence.

Collapsing the story a bit, we see something like this:

Big Bang

First emergences: the four fundamental forces

Second emergence: quarks, electrons, neutrinos

Third emergence: hadrons (e.g., protons and neutrons)

Fourth emergence: atomic nuclei

Fifth emergence: atoms (hydrogen and helium)

Sixth emergence: stars and galaxies

Seventh emergence: the elements are created (via novae and supernovae) and chemical compounds: what we normally call "matter"

Eighth emergence: living things

Each emergence sees new entities come into being from the "stuff" (energy or forces or strings or whatever) that was present, though the properties and characteristics of each emergent cannot be predicted from what went before. Moreover, emergent phenomena are embedded in the matrix of their creation: each emergent uses what has previously emerged to create a new entity from the old parts.

For example, the quarks, electrons, and neutrinos that emerged were acted up by the four fundamental forces and followed the universal principle of everything following the path of least resistance. The regular matter—the elements and chemical compounds that we recognize as "matter"—is built upon and from the quarks and electrons and neutrinos that first emerged, though the quarks are now bound into particles and no longer exist separately, but they are the basis and are still present.

Similarly the living things that emerged on Earth still incorporate and use the previous emergents: the fundamental forces continue working as they always have, matter/energy continues following the path of least effort, but the way these things are now organized, into a self-replicating unit, is new. And with self-replication (passing along the characteristics of the originator, with occasional differences) and limited resources, evolution begins inevitably. Evolution simply describes how different patterns of replicators have different success rates, with the more successful creating more copies. No thought, plan, design, or will is present: the living things as well as the matter of which they are made all follow the path of least effort.

In a nutshell, the matter/energy and forces we observe in the universe today are a result of emergence from the Big Bang: simply following natural processes brought them into being from that initial event. First to emerge (in a sense) was physics, then chemistry, and lately biology.

No one doubts that simple animals and plants and fungi have no free will at all. Although they live and reproduce, their life follows the same trajectory and principle as matter and energy: the path of least effort. This is not to say that the result is simple. As I mentioned earlier, even pebbles in interstellar space have orbits of sufficient complexity as to be beyond computation: complexity and chaotic systems exist at every level of existence, the natural outcome of systems in which every part affects and is affected by every other part. But nonetheless, those arise from each component at every level following the path of least effort and interacting in the various modes possible.

Next I want to write about the emergence of humanity, the ninth great emergence.

The above is the beautiful razor: a 1940′s Super Speed plated in rhodium. Nickel plating ($35) would have been both cheaper and more authentic than the rhodium plating ($65), but rhodium is definitely classy.

Here’s the complete set-up for today’s shave:

Always a good lather from Tabac, today ginned up with the Rooney Style 3, Size 2 Super Silvertip. Then the “new” Super Speed with a “new” Swedish Gillette blade provided three very smooth passes. (This actually is the first use of that Swedish Gillette blade, but since they’re no longer made, it’s hard to claim “new.”) A splash of Tobac and I’m good to go.

Interesting:

Nurses have a responsibility to respect and support patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes, but must stay within the law and follow professional guidance at all times, according to a research review in the September issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing. Dr Anita Green and Dr Kay De-Vries studied more than 50 published papers, together with professional and Government guidance documents, official reports and media coverage, from 1996 to 2009.

They point out that the fact that the cannabis is usually obtained illegally can have consequences for those who choose to use it for its medicinal value and create real dilemmas for the nurses and other healthcare professionals who care for them. For example, it is vital that any drug use is recorded on the patient’s medical records for their own safety, but many patients may be unhappy for that to happen.

"Nurses are increasingly likely to deal with patients using medicinal cannabis and it is important that they put their personal views to one side and deal with the health consequences of that drug use" says Dr Green, a Nurse Consultant for the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Visiting Fellow at the University of Brighton.

"The literature on the medicinal use of cannabis repeatedly refers to changes that could improve people’s quality of life, like improved sleep, a better appetite and reduced depression, and these perceived benefits have led to greater usage.

"However, it also states that far more research is needed and it is very important that patients are fully aware of the legal consequences of taking cannabis, together with the physical and psychological effects it may have on them.

"Nurses and other healthcare professionals need to be well informed about the medicinal effects of cannabis and how this can interact with other medication the patient is being prescribed. It is also vital that the patient’s cannabis use is accurately documented in their records and that other professionals, such as pharmacists, doctors and substance misuse teams are brought in to provide advice, with their permission."

Cannabis, which has been widely used as a herbal remedy since ancient times, was brought to Western Europe at the beginning of the 19th century by Napoleonic soldiers who had been fighting in North Africa.

Its medicinal use was advocated in European and American medical articles as far back as 1849, but was banned in the UK in 1928 after UK delegates at an international opium conference were persuaded that cannabis caused insanity.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nancy Hellmich reports for USA Today:

If you’ve been blaming your weight on your genes, get out and take a brisk walk. It will help fight your tendency toward overweight, a new study shows.

Researchers in Great Britain studied 12 genetic variants known to increase the risk of obesity and tracked the physical activity levels of 20,430 people.

They created a genetic summary score to quantify a person’s risk of obesity and then examined whether an active life could reduce the genetic influence.

Findings: Physical activity can reduce the genetic tendency toward obesity by 40%, according to the research, reported Tuesday in PLoS Medicine.

"Our findings challenge the popular myth that obesity is unavoidable if it runs in the family," says senior researcher Ruth Loos of Great Britain’s Medical Research Council in Cambridge. "We see this as a hopeful message."

You can get the benefits without running marathons, she says. You can walk the dog, bike to work or take the stairs: "Being active about 30 minutes a day is a good start in reducing the effects of the genes.".

U.S. experts say the study adds to the data on the importance of exercise for weight control. "This is more evidence that behavior can modify genetic predisposition," says Tim Church, director of preventive medicine research at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge…

Continue reading. And note the sidebar:

HOW MUCH ACTIVITY IS NEEDED TO IMPROVE HEALTH?

The government’s latest physical activity guidelines recommend:

Keep track by the week. Adults need at least 2 hours of moderate-intensity activity each week, such as brisk walking, or 1 hours of a vigorous-intensity activity, such as jogging or swimming laps, or a combination of the two types. These activities should be done in at least 10-minute bouts and can be spread throughout the week.

Get more ambitious.For even more health benefits, engage in 5 hours of moderate-intensity physical activity each week or 2 hours of vigorous activity.

Strengthen those muscles.Adults should do muscle-strengthening activities at a moderate- or high-intensity level for all major muscle groups two or more days a week, including exercises for the chest, back, shoulders, upper legs, hips, abdomen and lower legs. The exercises can be done with free weights or machines, resistance bands, calisthenics that use body weight for resistance (push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups, for instance) or carrying heavy loads or doing heavy gardening such as digging or hoeing.

Don’t use age as an excuse. Older Americans should follow the guidelines recommended for other adults if they are able. If not, they should try to be as active as their physical condition allows. Those who are at risk of falling should do exercises that improve balance.

Kids can make it fun. Children and adolescents should engage in an hour or more of moderate-intensity to vigorous aerobic physical activity each day. That should include vigorous activity at least three days a week, and it should involve bone-strengthening activities such as running, jumping rope, skipping and hopscotch, and muscle-strengthening activities such as tug of war, modified sit-ups and push-ups.

The blood draw Monday showed at all functions are normal (liver, kidney, etc.). They started with a cholesterol test at the doctor’s office, and I was chuffed when he said it was the best cholesterol situation that he’s seen in 20 years. Ignoring the various units and focusing on the numbers:

I suspect that he meant it’s the best he’s seen in 20 years for my age group, but still.

The stress EKG was interesting and included ultrasonic movies of my heart before and immediately after my stint on the treadmill. It did show that the extra beat is still present: it was present at the beginning, stopped as I began walking, and then as the load mounted (faster, greater incline) it returned with a vengeance. I couldn’t feel it, but it was evident in the graph.

The doctor said that it could be a wiring problem, but the most common cause is a coronary artery problem. So I’ll be going up to Stanford University for another test and perhaps a stent. He said the test itself has some risks (a mortality rate of 0.1% – 1 in 1000), but not so great a risk as a heart attack (50% mortality rate for a first heart attack, which surprised me—I guess I’ve seen too many TV shows where for plot reasons survival is mandatory). It’s sobering to contemplate that half of those experiencing their first heart attack don’t make it.

He also told me that my aerobic capacity is good to very good—and I’m only at 15 minutes! Wait’ll I’m cranking out 30 min/day on the Nordic.

I asked about continuing the Nordic Track. He thought it would be fine to continue at 15 minutes, but for now not to increase the duration.

I also got my flu shot. I went in at 8:45 fasting, and I didn’t get lunch until 12:30pm. Time was when this would have resulted in a low-blood-sugar reaction, but now I was just sort of hungry. Just had a little gazpacho (I now buy tomatoes individually and make VERY small batches) and a boiled egg. Later I’ll have a salad with some shrimp I bought.

UPDATE: Full disclosure: one reason my blood pressure and cholesterol are so very good is that I take drugs to control them. I do not in fact have superpowers.

John McWhorter writes:

Changing the policy that has broken up families and put thousands of men in prison would have a far more positive impact on the black community than any number of symbolic marches.

So it happened. The Reclaim the Dream March "recaptured the flavor" of the March on Washington. But it isn’t an accident that this brings to mind popping an old piece of gum from the underside of a desk into your mouth to see how much "flavor" might still be left in it.

The 1963 March on Washington, of course, was a signature and significant event. The question, however, is what the value is of trying to do it again. There comes a point when these marches are gestures rather than actions. And that point has come.

We can admit now, for instance, that the Million Man March, for all of the beauty many saw in it and for all of the power of Spike Lee’s movie about it, created not a single lasting thing. Fifteen years later, the black community remains in crisis for all of the exact same reasons.

The March on Washington, at a certain point in time and with an unprecedented massiveness, had a function. "Let’s do it again," for all of the drama in it, does not. As early as 1972 at the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Ind., Thomas Fortune, the Brooklyn, N.Y., assemblyman, was exclaiming to a reporter, "We met; therefore we won!" That must have felt true at the time, but what was won at that colorful but legacy-free event?

In 1991 in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, I recall many black people saying it was time to stop talking about things and actually do something. Yet here we are, 20 years later, still talking — say, about baggy pants, as if elders sputtering about them isn’t part of the appeal of letting them hang in the first place.

Every time I see one of these marches or forums covered as significant, what occurs to me is that there is one thing we should all be focused on instead. It is, of all things, the War on Drugs. The most meaningfully pro-black policy today would be a white-hot commitment to ending its idiocy.

The massive number of black men in prison, described on The Root site here, stands as a rebuke to all calls to "get past racism," exhibit initiative or stress optimism. And the primary reason for this massive number of black men in jail is the War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs destroys black families. It has become a norm for black children to grow up with their fathers in prison and barely knowing them. Data are unanimous in showing that children, especially poor ones, do better with two parents. We see the young black man in a do-rag pushing a baby carriage as a welcome sight rather than as a norm. That must stop.

The War on Drugs discourages young black men from . . .

Continue reading.

Ed Brayton:

Jeff Sharlet, who has a new book coming out soon about The Family, was on Fresh Air on NPR last week talking about some of his findings about this group and their work in Uganda on the kill-the-gays bill. Jeff spent a lot of time in Uganda researching for this book and what he found is very disturbing, particularly about David Bahati, the sponsor of the bill and the Family’s leader in that country:

"Bahati said: ‘If you come here, you’ll see homosexuals from Europe and America are luring our children into homosexuality by distributing cell phones and iPods and things like this,’ " Sharlet recounts. "And he said, ‘And I can explain to you what I really want to do.’ "

Sharlet accompanied Bahati to a restaurant and later to his home, where Bahati told Sharlet that he wanted "to kill every last gay person."

"It was a very chilling moment, because I’m sitting there with this man who’s talking about his plans for genocide, and has demonstrated over the period of my relationship with him that he’s not some back bencher — he’s a real rising star in the movement," Sharlet says. "This was something that I hadn’t understood before I went to Uganda, that this was a guy with real potential and real sway and increasingly a following in Uganda."

The American leadership of The Family has publicly distanced itself from this bill, saying that they oppose its passage. But that doesn’t exactly resolve them of some responsibility here:

And he has connections to American leaders. Sharlet explains that Bahati is one of the Uganda leaders of an American evangelical movement called the Fellowship, or the Family — the secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians who wield considerable political influence, both in Washington and abroad.

"I discovered … that there was this very direct relationship," Sharlet says. "And [the Fellowship members] are emphatic and saying: ‘We haven’t killed any gay people in Uganda. This isn’t what we had in mind. We didn’t pull the trigger.’ And that’s true. They didn’t pull the trigger. But there’s a sense in which they built the gun, which was this institutional idea of government being decided by small groups of elite leaders like Bahati, getting together and trying to conform government to their idea of Biblical law. And this is what their American benefactors wanted them to do."

The same is true of Lou Engle, Rick Warren and other preachers who have taken their anti-gay crusade to Africa.

Andrew Rice reports in the NY Times on how the free market treats a lifesaving innovation:

Like most tales of great invention, the story of Plumpy’nut begins with a eureka moment, in this case involving a French doctor and a jar of Nutella, and proceeds through the stages of rejection, acceptance, evangelization and mass production. The product may not look like much — a little foil packet filled with a soft, sticky substance — but its advocates are prone to use the language of magic and wonders. What is Plumpy’nut? Sound it out, and you get the idea: it’s an edible paste made of peanuts, packed with calories and vitamins, that is specially formulated to renourish starving children. Since its widespread introduction five years ago, it has been credited with significantly lowering mortality rates during famines in Africa. Children on a Plumpy’nut regimen add pounds rapidly, often going from a near-death state to relative health in a month. In the world of humanitarian aid, where progress is usually measured in subtle increments of misery, the new product offers a rare satisfaction: swift, visible, fantastic efficacy.

Plumpy’nut is also a brand name, however, the registered trademark of Nutriset, a private French company that first manufactured and marketed the paste. It was not the intention of Plumpy’nut’s inventor, a crusading pediatrician named André Briend, to create an industry around Plumpy’nut. Briend, his friends say, was always personally indifferent to money. (Also, apparently, to publicity — he declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article.) One element of genius in Briend’s recipe was precisely its easy replicability: it could be made by poor people, for poor people, to the benefit of patients and farmers alike. Most of the world’s peanuts are grown in developing countries, where allergies to them are relatively uncommon, and the rest of the concoction is simple to prepare. On a visit to Malawi, Briend whipped up a batch in a blender to prove that Plumpy’nut could be made just about anywhere.

Read the rest of this entry »

From Open Culture by Dan Colman:

Back in 1983, the BBC aired Fun to Imagine, a television series hosted by Richard Feynman that used physics to explain how the everyday world works – “why rubber bands are stretchy, why tennis balls can’t bounce forever, and what you’re really seeing when you look in the mirror.” In case you’re not familiar with him, Feynman was a Nobel prize-winning physicist who had a gift for many things, including popularizing science and particularly physics. The clip above comes from Fun to Imagine, and thanks to this dedicated BBC website, you can now watch all six videos in the series, each running about 12 minutes.  If you’re looking for more Feynman videos, let me give you this: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, an hour-long BBC/PBS program from 1981, and Feynman’s legendary lectures on physics taped in 1964, now posted online courtesy of Bill Gates. And, oh yes, don’t forget Feynman playing the bongos too…

Weird Drug Politics in the Kentucky Senate Campaign

New Colombian President Joins Call for Drug Legalization Debate

California Legislature Passes Marijuana Decriminalization Bill

I go see the cardiologist later for a cholesterol screening (thus I’m fasting) and a stress EKG (thus no Nordic this morning). Should be interesting.

That’s the “before.” Here’s the “after”:

I stupidly forgot to take photos specifically for comparison, but I thought the above might work. (Click photos to enlarge.) The top photo is for my shave on 6 July this year, the second photo this morning’s shave. Quite an improvement, eh? And the feel is wonderful. And, with a Swedish Gillette blade, it delivered a very smooth shave. Always a great razor, now better.

Credit to Razor Emporium. They do a lot of refurbishing and prep work before sending the razor off to be plated, and it shows. A commenter asked whether the numerals on the Fat Boy would be refinished, and they are indeed. I just had my razor detailed!  – Oh. I see they indeed call it a “razor revamp,” which is more accurate than “razor replating.”

UPDATE: A commenter pointed out that the razor in the “before” photo above is actually not the same as the razor in the “after”. I sent two Fat Boys in for replating, one with endcaps and one without endcaps. The “before” photo above is the former, the “after” is the latter. Here’s the actual “after” photo of the “before” above:

Interesting talk, via Open Culture. The big payoffs are in the last few minutes.

As we end our occupation of Iraq (though apparently some troops will remain), I highly recommend the movie Green Zone to remind us of how the US conducted itself in this war. Glenn Greenwald pounds into a pasty mash the irresponsible "nobody could have known" excuse:

The predominant attribute of American elites is a refusal to take responsibility for any failures.  The favored tactic for accomplishing this evasion is the "nobody-could-have-known" excuse.  Each time something awful occurs — the 9/11 attack, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, the breaking of levees in New Orleans, the general ineptitude and lawlessness of the Bush administration — one is subjected to an endless stream of excuse-making from those responsible, insisting that there was no way they "could have known" what was to happen:  "I don’t think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Condoleezza Rice infamously said on May 16, 2002, despite multiple FBI and intelligence documents warning of exactly that.  One finds identical excuses for each contemporary American disaster.  Robert Gibbs just invoked the same false excuse:  that "nobody" knew the depth of the financial and unemployment crisis early last year.

Because the political class is treating today as some sort of melodramatic milestone in the Iraq War, there is a tidal wave of those self-defending claims crashing down around us.  The New York Times‘ John Burns — who bravely covered that war for years — presents a classic case of this mentality today in a solemn retrospective entitled "The Long-Awaited Day."  I realize we’re all supposed to genuflect to Burns’ skills as a war journalist — I’ve personally found him far more overtly supportive of the war than most others covering it and certainly more than his claimed objectivity would permit, even when his reporting was illuminating — but if he’s right about what he says today, it’s a rather enormous (albeit unintentional) indictment of himself and his colleagues covering the war:

Hindsight is a powerful thing, and there have been plenty of voices amid the tragedy that has unfolded since the invasion to say, in effect, "I told you so." But among that band of reporters –  men and women who thought we knew something about Iraq, and for the most part sympathized with the joy Iraqis felt at what many were unashamed then to call their "liberation" — there were few, if any, who foresaw the extent of the violence that would follow or the political convulsion it would cause in Iraq, America and elsewhere.

We could not know then, though if we had been wiser we might have guessed, the scale of the toll the invasion would unleash: the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who would die; the nearly 4,500 American soldiers who would be killed; the nearly 35,000 soldiers who would return home wounded; the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who would flee abroad as refugees; the $750 billion in direct war costs that would burden the United States; the bitterness that would seep into American politics; the anti-Americanism that would become a commonplace around the world.

If Burns wants to claim that he and his American media colleagues in Baghdad were unaware that any of this was likely, I can’t and won’t dispute that.  In fact, it’s probably true that they were unaware of it — blissfully so — which is why media coverage in the lead-up to the war was so inexcusably one-sided in its war cheerleading, as even Howard Kurtz documented.  But Burns’ claim that they "could not know then" that the invasion could unleash all of the tragedy, violence and anti-Americanism it spawned is absolutely ludicrous, a patent attempt to justify his severe errors in judgment as being unavoidable.

Aside from the obvious, intrinsic risks of invading a country smack in the middle of the Muslim world, with much of the world vehemently opposed, there were countless people warning of exactly these possibilities from invading.  If Burns and his friends were unaware of those risks, it was only because they decided to ignore those voices, not because they could not have known.  Here, as but one example, is Jim Webb in 2002, arguing against an attack on Iraq in The Washington Post:

Meanwhile, American military leaders have been trying to bring a wider focus to the band of neoconservatives that began beating the war drums on Iraq before the dust had even settled on the World Trade Center. Despite the efforts of the neocons to shut them up or to dismiss them as unqualified to deal in policy issues, these leaders, both active-duty and retired, have been nearly unanimous in their concerns. Is there an absolutely vital national interest that should lead us from containment to unilateral war and a long-term occupation of Iraq? . . . .

With respect to the situation in Iraq, they are conscious of two realities that seem to have been lost in the narrow debate about Saddam Hussein himself. The first reality is that wars often have unintended consequences — ask the Germans, who in World War I were convinced that they would defeat the French in exactly 42 days. . . . .

The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay. . . . .

The Iraqis are a multiethnic people filled with competing factions who in many cases would view a U.S. occupation as infidels invading the cradle of Islam. Indeed, this very bitterness provided Osama bin Laden the grist for his recruitment efforts in Saudi Arabia when the United States kept bases on Saudi soil after the Gulf War.

In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets. . . . It is true that Saddam Hussein might try to assist international terrorist organizations in their desire to attack America. It is also true that if we invade and occupy Iraq without broad-based international support, others in the Muslim world might be encouraged to intensify the same sort of efforts.

And here’s Howard Dean, in one of the more prescient political speeches of the last decade, speaking at Drake University, roughly one month before the war began:

We have been told over and over again what the risks will be if we do not go to war.

We have been told little about what the risks will be if we do go to war.

If we go to war, I certainly hope the Administration’s assumptions are realized, and the conflict is swift, successful and clean. . . .

It is possible, however, that events could go differently, and that the Iraqi Republican Guard will not sit out in the desert where they can be destroyed easily from the air.

It is possible that Iraq will try to force our troops to fight house to house in the middle of cities — on its turf, not ours — where precision-guided missiles are of little use.

It is possible that women and children will be used as shields and our efforts to minimize civilian casualties will be far less successful than we hope.

There are other risks.

Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Iran and Turkey each have interests in Iraq they will be tempted to protect with or without our approval.

If the war lasts more than a few weeks, the danger of humanitarian disaster is high, because many Iraqis depend on their government for food, and during war it would be difficult for us to get all the necessary aid to the Iraqi people.

There is a risk of environmental disaster, caused by damage to Iraq’s oil fields.

And, perhaps most importantly, there is a very real danger that war in Iraq will fuel the fires of international terror.

Anti-American feelings will surely be inflamed among the misguided who choose to see an assault on Iraq as an attack on Islam, or as a means of controlling Iraqi oil.

And last week’s tape by Osama bin Laden tells us that our enemies will seek relentlessly to transform a war into a tool for inspiring and recruiting more terrorists.

We should remember how our military presence in Saudi Arabia has been exploited by radicals to stir resentment and hatred against the United States, leading to the murder of American citizens and soldiers.

We need to consider what the effect will be of a U.S. invasion and occupation of Baghdad, a city that served for centuries as a capital of the Islamic world. 

I could literally spend the rest of the day quoting those who were issuing similar or even more strident warnings.  Anyone who claims they didn’t realize that an attack on Iraq could spawn mammoth civilian casualties, pervasive displacement, endless occupation and intense anti-American hatred is indicting themselves more powerfully than it’s possible for anyone else to do.  And anyone who claims, as Burns did, that they "could not know then" that these things might very well happen is simply not telling the truth.  They could have known.  And should have known.  They chose not to.

UPDATE:  Perhaps even worse than the strain of "nobody-could-have-known" excuse-making invoked by Burns is the claim that "nobody could have known" that Iraq did not really have WMDs.  Contrary to the pervasive self-justifying myth that "everyone" believed that Saddam possessed these weapons — and thus nobody can be blamed for failing to realize the truth — the evidence to the contrary was both public and overwhelming.  Consider the March 17, 2003, Der Spiegel Editorial warning that "for months now, Bush and Blair have been busy blowing up, exaggerating and deliberately over-interpreting intelligence information and rumours to justify war on Iraq," or a September 30, 2002 McClatchy article — headlined: "War talk fogged by lingering questions; Threat Hussein poses is unclear to experts" — which detailed the reasons for serious skepticism about the pro-war case.

Or simply recall the various pre-war statements by the ex-Marine and U.N. weapons inspector for Iraq, Scott Ritter ("The truth of the matter is that Iraq has not been shown to possess weapons of mass destruction, either in terms of having retained prohibited capability from the past, or by seeking to re-acquire such capability today"), or Howard Dean in his Drake speech ("Secretary Powell’s recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary, but rather by its sketchiness").  All of that, too, was brushed aside by government officials and suppressed and even mocked by most of the  American media, all of whom were determined to allow nothing to impede the march to war.  Rather than take responsibility for their failings, they instead insist — as Burns did today — that they could not have known.

UPDATE II:  Every retrospective from supporters of the attack on Iraq, if they’re to be honest and worthwhile, should read more or less like John Cole’s, from 2008.

UPDATE III:  After Obama’s Iraq speech last night, I was on CBC — Canada’s broadcasting network — discussing that speech.  It can be seen here.  As you can see, Skype video technology is improving rapidly and enabling acceptance of more TV offers.

UPDATE IV:  For sheer factual inaccuracy in John Burns’ observations,see here.

UPDATE V:  Speaking of accountability for those responsible for the Iraq War, Simon Owens has a very good article on the criticisms provoked by Jeffrey Goldberg’s Iran article in The Atlantic — featuring my criticisms of him — and what that dynamic reflects about the new media landscape.

UPDATE VI:  Here’s someone who, back in 1994, definitely understood what invading Iraq would unleash (and note the sociopathic, though quite typical, refusal to factor in "deaths of Iraqi civilians" as one of the "costs"):

George Zornick at ThinkProgress:

This week, on the eve of the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a new study was released documenting the shocking psychological toll the storm had on children in the Gulf Coast. Researchers at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health found that more than 37 percent of children displaced by Katrina have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or behavioral and conduct disorders. These children were also five times more likely to experience emotional disturbances than kids not affected by the hurricane. “From the perspective of the Gulf’s most vulnerable children and families, the recovery from Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans has been a dismal failure,” said study researcher Dr. Irwin Redlener. Earlier studies that examined mental illness in adult survivors found very similar results: just under a third of respondents reported mental problems.

One way that many people could have received mental health care following the storm was through Medicaid. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Medicaid is the dominant source of funding for both children and adults with mental illness, comprising more than 50 percent of public mental health spending. However, the Bush administration — even after being roundly pilloried for the initial logistical response to Katrina — neutered emergency Medicaid relief for Gulf Coast residents in the months following the storm.

After Katrina, Senators from both parties wanted to enact a “Disaster Relief Medicaid” program, which would have temporarily extended Medicaid benefits to all low-income residents affected by the storm, even if they were above the minimum income requirements for enrollment. The same type of program was enacted after the September 11 terror attacks, but this time around, it met stiff resistance from the Bush administration.

The Journal of the American Medical Association outlined the battle in a 2006 article(subscription only):

[T]he pathway to assistance has proven to be bitterly contentious, reflecting a deep philosophical divide rather than party differences… The legislation met with immediate and fierce resistance on the part of the Bush Administration and its supporters, who sought to halt structural Medicaid improvements, at the very time that Congress, as part of the fiscal year 2006 budget process, was preparing to enact Medicaid spending reductions… Seeking to avert legislative establishment of a Medicaid disaster relief program, the Bush Administration devised an alternative that lacked the central elements of the Grassley-Baucus legislation. Predicated on the Health and Human Services Secretary’s powers under the demonstration provisions of the Social Security Act, the Bush Administration’s plan limited aid to 5 months, retained Medicaid’s exclusion of more than half of all poor adults (relying instead on establishing an uncompensated care fund for use by designated states, who in turn would be under no obligation to pay any specific physician or other health care provider), eliminated national coverage portability, and assumed continued financial contribution from affected states.

As one would expect, researchers looking into this issue have found that “having insurance was associated with continuing in mental health treatment.” The Bush administration’s cruel efforts to limit Medicaid assistance in the wake of the storm is having a lasting toll in the Gulf Coast today.

But even the optimal Medicaid Relief program, as was used after September 11, would only have been temporary, and a stronger safety net is needed for victims of this and future disasters. “Hurricane Katrina exposed a health care system incapable of withstanding the long-term impact of a major disaster,” the JAMA article says. “Through destruction and permanent displacement, Katrina illuminated the fundamental weaknesses inherent in the national approach to health care financing, as well as the extent to which these weaknesses can threaten recovery.”