Jay Manifold

In the spirit of ken’s post, below … currently tied for #12 on Blogdex, Juan Cole paints a compelling picture with numbers:

The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.
Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

There’s much more, and it’s worth reading, so graze on over and read it.
All done? Great. Now for The Rest Of The Story:

Read more

UofC College and GSB alum (and occasional commenter on this blog) Bill Roule sends this heartening link with the subject line “Finally, we get some well deserved recognition!”

Ewww.

Via Virginia, Jonathan Rauch on Security and Securities:

“Before 9/11,” says Paretti, “this room was full, because we had all the bodies here.” Where are they now? He points to a large-screen TV. It shows video feeds from three command centers. One is where we’re standing. The others are — well, somewhere. DTCC now runs several remote command centers, all of them in secret locations, some more than 1,000 miles away, and each fully staffed and capable of running the whole settlement system. Any center can independently take control if others cease to respond.

RTWT.

This is post #2112. We have assumed control.