Tuesday, June 28, 2005

"It is an ancient Mariner,


And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?"

OK, what’s with the fucking Coleridge poem, because it’s waay too early for a pop quiz.

Bear with me.

We humans, we like our round numbers.

C’mon, admit it. You know we do.

No “Nations #1 Psychics Reveal -- Top 7.3 Beauty Tips of the Dead.” or “Thirteen-and-a-half Hot Secrets for Turning Your Man From a Boo Berry to Capt’n Crunch ” list is going to get you to plunk down your four bucks for the glossy embarrassments that pass for reading material in America’s supermarkets.

And because of the fingers and toes arrangement with which (Fundies, please avert your eyes. This is NOT work-safe) Evolution has gifted us (OK, you can look now), we like our round numbers in base ten.

No freaky, hippy, vaguely-French-seeming hexadecimal for us, no sir.

No octal.

And except for computers, and Presidential Edicts on Terrorism ---

(Such as the very definitive “You’re either with us, or with the Terrorists”…

like the Insurgents…

who are all Terrorists…

apparently unless you’re negotiating with them…

which we learned from our antic Secretary of Defense this weekend we were doing, a LOT…

but only with the Good Insurgents and not the Bad Insurgents…

which is reassuring, because if it were otherwise, one might think this Administration may have lied about certain pretty important things…

which might cause one to idly wonder what other things they had lied about…

which sorta begs the question, since we have such incredibly sketchy intel on who the Insurgents are in the first place, are we basing our ability to differentiate between Good Insurgents and Bad Insurgents on some Powerful Frist-like Remote Diagnostic Ability, or secret handshakes or a type of Star-Bellied Sneetch technology that I’m not familiar with...

or what?)

--- we loathe binary.

We like tens, but only when “10” doesn’t by some Clinton Liberal word-parsing trickery really mean eight or two or something.

We notice tens.

So when I noticed that the most conservative estimate of number of soldiers wounded in Iraq had topped 13,000 it caught my attention in different way than that tragic number had in the past.

Because as understandably hard as it is to get a definitive number for the troops deployed in Iraq, and as tricky as it is to pin down exactly what we’re calling a casualty this week and how we’re tallying it, the fact is, we’ve got 130,000 troops in Iraq – give or take – and we’ve got 13,000 wounded – give or take.

Which means we’re at ten percent, or will be very soon.

Ten percent.

A nice, easy-to-remember number, ten-percent. Sorta just rooooolls of the tongue, doesn’t it?

Something for our petit Chickenhawk Republicans Reagan Youth to think about at their next kegger, while they’re doing beer bongs and lines of coke off each others pasty asses.

And “wounded” doesn’t mean nicked yourself shaving, or sliced a thumb doing watermelon shooters.

If you serve in Iraq, it means you stand a one-in-ten chance of losing an eye, or a leg, or having your chest smashed open by shrapnel.

At the next Junior GOP bash, look around the room at a hundred of your closest friends slobbing all over each other and braying about the Ascendant Glory that is the brave, brave Republican Party that sends the Underclasses off to die so that the Uberclasses can party like flappers and bootleggers in the upholstered comfort of Mommy’s well-appointed basement.

Because in Iraq, ten of them would be bleeding out from a belly wound all over that nice genuine Hopi rug and the fake Italian leather couch.

In Iraq, ten of them would be reeling in numb shock, wondering where their arm went.

In Iraq, ten of them would be on a chopper, trying to breathe with scalded lungs.

In Iraq, ten of them would be screaming for their mothers and shitting themselves in terror.

And with over 1,700 soldiers KIA, in Iraq, two of them would be dead.

So why the Coleridge poem?

Because it’s you who killed the albatross, Young Republicans motherfuckers, and it is around your necks this stinking war now hangs.

It’s your turn to go face the wraith that you turned loose.

It other words…

“It is an Insurgent Warrior,
And he woundeth one of ten.
To face his long beard and glittering eye,
Now it’s your turn, Barbie and Ken!

This is the war you wanted, Young Republicans.

This is the war you begged for and celebrate.

This is the war you didn’t care was sold with lies, as long as you got to conquer by proxy and kill by remote control.

But now your war isn’t going so good, Young Republicans, and the President you overwhelmingly supported so that he could continue to prosecute your optional war exactly as you wanted it done needs you to serve.

Talking-time is over, Young Republicans.

The War God you elected is still hungry. He demands a sacrifice of flesh: without it, your dreams of PNAC Global Empire will be lost forever.

So step up, join up and go to Iraq, Young Republicans. Do it now, because we will never, ever let you forget it if you don’t.

Do it now, Young Republicans, and do it now.

Because if you don't, you will be invited, forever and always, to…

01100111 01101111

00100000

01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011

00100000

01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 01110011 01100101 01101100 01110110 01100101 01110011

(Gadzooks, dreamweasel is quite right. I dropped a letter. This should rectify it.)

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Technical Merit- 10
Artistic Interpretation- 10

A perfect score, the Gold Medal of Blogging.

Anonymous said...

I've recently stumbled across your blog and have been reading your archives -- you've hit the nail on the head so many times but this one gave me goosebumps. Keep up the good work.-

Mike the Mad Biologist said...

I agree with your sentiment, but not the math. I'm pretty certain more than 130,000 soldiers have served in the Iraqi theater. Then again, whether it's 1%, 5%, or 10%, the whole damn thing is awful.

driftglass said...

Mike the Mad Biologist,

Your ‘rithmatic is correct and I did think about that, and the fact that total troop rotation would be a fairer number to use, and I proceeded anyway for the following reasons, some meant kiddingly, some meant otherwise.

In fact, over one million troops have rotated through Afghanistan and Iraq since 09/11, which is one helluva story all by itself.

First, the total number of wounded is, in fact, equal to 10% of the total number of troops currently in Iraq. I mean when it comes to torturing numbers to get them to say what you want, why should the GOP have all the fun :-)

Second…9//11 changed everything, even math. Again, why is this a check only America hating Republicans can cash.

Third, like Lyndon Johnson said about calling his opponent a pigfucker, I don’t care if he did it, I just want to hear his deny it. But in this case I specifically welcome a little clash over the numbers because…

Fourth, I don’t believe the 13,000 figure is even close to an honest one.

This from NOW (the teevee program, not the Women’s Organization) from a year ago sums it up better than I can…


MITCHELL: How do you figure out the human "cost" of war?

Sometimes, it's brutally obvious when the wounded scramble out of a tank hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Two marines were injured in this attack. One lost his right eye.

The Pentagon keeps a close watch on the grim tally in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latest figures: 922 killed. 5,457 wounded in action. And the press reports those numbers.

But there's another figure neither the Pentagon nor the press are talking about — the more than 11,000 soldiers coming home disabled, injured, sick who aren't on the Pentagon's casualty list because the military says they weren't injured in combat.


MITCHELL: The cost is great and far higher than the approximately 5,000 wounded-in-action the public has been hearing about.

BENJAMIN: The number of casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom are exponentially higher, thousands and thousands of soldiers higher than what the Pentagon seems to say the casualty numbers for Operation Iraqi Freedom are.

MITCHELL: Mark Benjamin is the investigations editor at U.P.I. For the past year, he's traveled to American military bases to report on how the military counts casualties.

BENJAMIN: It just seemed to me from walking around on military bases that the human cost of the war was a lot higher than what I had been reading.

Essentially just the numbers didn't seem to add up.

----------

Anonymous said...

First -- ditto anonymous' comments....driftglass is on my daily reading list

Second -- how about some help with the binary -- TIA

triozyg said...

While I was working out the binary a new post -- man, driftglass you are the greatest.

Hints: the binary that works out to 32 in that dull boring base ten means -- guess what? a space. Another hint -- it fits exactly with the preceding text.

Anonymous said...

Awesome.

Anonymous said...

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

(sorry for the flippancy, but my wife is likely to become one of those 130,000 in the next 6 months, and if I start writing out exactly what I really do feel, I'll be sitting here for the next 3 hours, foaming at the mouth)

Anonymous said...

Brilliant idea, but I think you made a mistake in the binary...

Mike the Mad Biologist said...

Driftglass,

thanks for the response. You're right about two things:

1) the injuries and deaths are horrible regardless of the real percentage.

2) the mainstream media (as well as Fox, but no surprise there) haven't covered the 'real' casualty story. I've heard from people who served there and also reports like NOW that the DOD is really fudging the numbers to lowball the estimate. Have you heard of anyone who has the numbers to back this up? Maybe a per annum comparison of 'died while in service' numbers before and after the War? The DOD would have a hard time hiding that number.

3) Over 1,000,000 in both theaters. Since the Air Force and Navy haven't deployed as heavily to Iraq (relatively speaking), I'm assuming this means many Army and Marines must have done multiple tours in the last three years. That's staggering.

Unknown said...

Great post, I enjoyed reading it.

Adding you to favorites, Ill have to come back and read it again later.

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