Their capacity is still pretty much what it is

The Putin Youth movement, the Nashis, of whom I have written before, will start drawing up lists of people they consider to be “fascists” and their liberal sympathisizers. It must nearly be time for a purge of the kulaks again. Doesn’t look good.

Here, it was all about numbers yesterday. Gen. Richard Myers (at the press conference I mentioned in my last post, before I had the full transcript) had to admit that the number of attacks in Iraq was about the same as a year ago, adding about the insurgents, “I think their capacity is still pretty much what it is,” which may be the only thing Myers said that I can’t disagree with, but then inexplicably said, “Almost any indicator you look at, the trends are up. So we’re definitely winning.”

Rumsfeld, who tried to intervene to stop reporters nailing Myers down on whether “their capacity is still pretty much what it is” means that we’ve made no progress at all against them in one year, clarified:

what you have is a relatively small number of people who have weapons and who have money and who are determined to try to prevent democracy from going forward. And it does not take a genius to go out and kill innocent men, women and children. That’s a perfectly doable thing in a society.

And “the Zarqawi thing, numerically, is relatively small. It just happens to be the most lethal element.”

Also, it doesn’t necessarily matter if one or more rises to replace every insurgent we kill or capture: “You can have – the insurgency could be actually increasing and our capability to deal with it increasing, in which case the level stays about the same.” So that’s ok, then.

Honestly, I’d make fun of these comments, but it would be so redundant, gilding the lily as it were.

Also, and this should get more critical attention than it will, Rumsfeld insists that Zarqawi is now in Al Qaida. His proof? Well, he says, they are “connected in a variety of different ways.” Asked if he means they are in communication, he sez, “Well, maybe other things. Maybe people. Maybe money. Maybe communications. Maybe an oath of allegiance. Who knows?” Well, I’m convinced. Actually, his ideas of what constitute evidence and logical argument show less engagement with the real world every day. Watch the slippage, answering a question about where Zarqawi’s resources and recruits are coming from, from supposition to absolute conviction:

I’m going to speculate here that a non-trivial portion of his finances and his recruits come from outside the country. And they undoubtedly come through Syria, and they come through Iran, probably, and through other countries

See how that happened? Just by having a thought, he convinced himself that it was true. If he can think it, it must be so.

Rummy, of course, agrees with Myers that we’re winning: “And the more [our folks] scoop them up and the more they visit with them, the more they learn. And the more they learn, they more -- go out and scoop up others.” Visit with them? Has there ever been a blander euphemism for torture?

Meanwhile, the State Department has decided not to release figures showing the number of terrorist attacks in 2004 was way up over 2003. Here’s my favorite part: State’s acting counterterrorism chief, one Karen Aguilar, explained, according to the WaPo, “that the statistics are not relevant to the required report on trends in global terrorism.” In another humorous, “Yes, Minister” touch, Aguilar said that the National Counterterrorism Center would release the figures, but that if it didn’t (and it won’t), State wouldn’t release them either.

Also, less entertainingly and more shamefully, State is low-balling figures on deaths in Sudan.

To conclude this post, the Bushies are doing great damage to political discourse by their cavalier attitude towards facts and evidence, by their belief that they generate reality through their rhetoric, that if they say something often enough it becomes true. They weren’t kidding about deriding the “reality-based community.”