THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

How could you possibly make your idiotic statement, "Atta boy IB. Don't be ashamed to admit you blame America first without rhyme, reason or any hint of justification," if you couldn't possibly know what the hell that justification might be since I haven't yet said anything, Bill Occom?

If you don't know what justification I have, then stop making assumptive asinine comments like the one you've made, Billy boy.

Yeah, but if those socialists get too comfy with the communists, then it would best if those socialists were dead.

Right, Billy boy?

The "Billy boy" crap is with the "atta boy" crap.

Your statement remains asinine, Billy, precisely because it is was and is an assumption.

The Wall Street Journal's fog of war

The Wall Street Journal features a science column today that points out one of the dangers -- or, depending on your perspective, benefits -- of spreading false information: Even if you retract it, people sometimes believe it.

The Journal's Sharon Begley previews an about-to-be-released "international study" on perceptions about the Iraq war. Its conclusions: People believe what they want to believe. Researchers showed people a list of stories from Iraq. Some of them were true, but two of them -- stories saying that Iraqis had engaged in an uprising against Saddam Hussein's Baathist party in Basra and had executed Coalition prisoners of war -- were retracted as untrue shortly after they were first reported in the press. As Begley writes, the researchers found that people who were skeptical about the war discounted the false stories, while people who supported war didn't. "People who were not suspicious of the motives behind the war continued to rely on misinformation," one of the researchers said.

Begley writes that people sometimes hold fast to false information when it "fits with their mental model," which people seek to retain "whatever it takes." She says it's a cautionary tale for journalists -- if you put out false information, people will continue to rely on it even if you later retract it.

We wonder if the Journal's editorial board is listening.

As the Columbia Journalism Review reported last year, the Journal's editorials in the run-up to the Iraq war were "hawkisk without a shade of doubt." The Journal said that the war would be "above all about American self-defense," and that, if the United Nations wouldn't do it, the United States would have to act to "prevent the emergence of nuclear- and biological-armed chaos." When Colin Powell briefed the United Nations on the WMDs that turned out not to exist, the Journal declared the case airtight. "The Powell evidence will be persuasive to anyone who is still persuadable," the Journal wrote. "It proves that Saddam is defying the will of the U.N. one more time, hiding his weapons in the hope that the world will again lose its will to stop him. "

In her column today, Begley bemoans the fact that, "six months after the invasion, one-third of Americans believed WMDs had been found, even though every such tentative claim was disconfirmed." We wonder how they got that idea.

-- Tim Grieve

Two Suicide Bombs Kill 27; Al Qaeda Claims Both

1 hour, 54 minutes ago

By Gideon Long

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Suicide bombers killed at least 27 people in attacks in two Iraqi cities Monday in the worst bloodshed since the country's historic election eight days ago.


Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq (news - web sites), led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for both blasts and vowed to carry out further attacks on "apostates and their masters," an apparent reference to U.S.-led forces and the Iraqis who work with them.


At least 15 civilians were killed and 17 wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded outside the main police headquarters in the town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.

Hachim Shahir, an 83-year-old bricklayer standing in line for hours to vote, was asked how it had been possible for somebody like him to arrive at such a late stage in life without ever having voted, and now finally to have cast a ballot. He thought for a long while, then answered: "America - it was America that did it."

And how did he feel about that?

"America will be good if it completes what it came here to do, to bring us democracy, and then it goes home," Mr. Shahir said. "The main thing now is that they keep their promises, and leave. Personally, I believe they will do it."