Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 194

So Half a Million Iraqis Did Die, After All

Remember, a few years back, when a couple of studies (including one published by prestigious Lancet) that found hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died in the years after the U.S. invasion were derided, even mocked, by most media and many expert commentators?  They pointed to reputable counts of those killed in the conflict, placing the number at "only" about 100,000.  When WikiLeaks released its Iraq War Logs, documented deaths shot up another 10,000 or so.

Now it turns out the early studies were probably correct.  What they perhaps got wrong was not the number of fatalities but the cause--almost half were related to the war but not directly caused by the weapons of war.  But: a half million died in any case.  So, sadly, my book on the media and the war, So Wrong for So Long, had it right.

From NBC just now:

About a half million Iraqi people died during the eight-year war in that country, and among those casualties roughly four in 10 perished due to Iraq's decimated infrastructure — from crippled health-care and power systems to interruptions in water and food supplies, according to a study released Tuesday.

U.S. researchers hired Iraqi physicians to go door-to-door at randomly selected homes in 100 Iraqi neighborhoods to ask families what members died between 2003 and 2011 and how they lost their lives, the report states. Among non-violent deaths tied to the war, the most common cause was heart attacks or cardiovascular conditions, followed by infant or childhood deaths other than injuries, chronic illnesses and cancer.

Greenwald Exits 'Guardian'

Wednesday Update:  The usually reliable Mike Calderone at Huff Post claims he's confirmed Scahill and Poitras will indeed be joining Greenwald in the new venture. 

Updates:  Wash Post claims the new outlet is seeking to hire Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill.   They have not commented.

Reuters with this scoop on man behind the offer:  "Glenn Greenwald, who has made headlines around the world with his reporting on U.S. electronic surveillance programs, is leaving the Guardian newspaper to join a new media venture funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, according to people familiar with the matter."

Earlier: Glenn in this case is sort of a victim of a leak. News about him leaving the Guardian, apparently on okay terms, got out before he had a chance to decide how he would describe the new media venture he is starting or joining.  What this means about the future of further Snowden stories we do not know.

Greenwald declined to comment on the precise scale of the new venture or on its budget, but he said it would be “a very well-funded… very substantial new media outlet.” He said the source of funding will be public when the venture is officially announced.

“My role, aside from reporting and writing for it, is to create the entire journalism unit from the ground up by recruiting the journalists and editors who share the same journalistic ethos and shaping the whole thing — but especially the political journalism part — in the image of the journalism I respect most,” he said.

Greenwald will continue to live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he said, and would bring some staff to Rio, but the new organization’s main hubs will be New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, he said.

'The Blobs'--True-Life Horror Story?

Jellyfish are often deadly, and taking over the planet--it says here.   Predators and almost impossible to kill.  Now they are gumming up power plants and ruining fishing in some areas.  No joke!

'Saddest' Story of the Month

NYT now admits it published a thoroughly bogus story last month on "the saddest high school in New York," which a study IDed--based on tweets, which should have raised alarms to begin with--as the fine Hunter College High in Manhattan.  After protests, the director now says that his data was based mainly a SINGLE tweeter located somewhat south of the school.

Serious Questions Over Medal of Honor Winner's Account

Well, this will set off some kind of shitstorm.  In a piece posted tonight, one of the top reporters in the country Jonathan Landay of McClatchy (see his writing on the run-up to the Iraq war and much since) questions the account of the bloody U.S. vs. Taliban battle that won Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer, 25,  a Medal of Honor. Landay was at the scene of the battle as an embedded reporter.  See another recent Landay piece on the "lost" Medal of Honor nomination for a Meyer colleague who is now critical of him.

But videos shot by Army medevac helicopter crewmen show no Taliban in that vicinity or anywhere else on the floor of the Ganjgal Valley at the time and location of the “swarm.” The videos also conflict with the version of the incident in Marine Corps and White House accounts of how Meyer, now 25, of Columbia, Ky., came to be awarded the nation’s highest military decoration for gallantry.

The videos add to the findings of an ongoing McClatchy investigation that determined that crucial parts of Meyer’s memoir were untrue, unsubstantiated or exaggerated, as were the Marine Corps and White House accounts of how he helped extract casualties from the valley under fire. The White House and Marine Corps have defended the accuracy of their accounts of Meyer’s actions. The Marine Corps declined to comment on the videos.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/14...

Another 'Steubenville' in Missouri?

Truly shocking story in the KC Star on a case that seems to follow a pattern: young girl gets mixed up with older (football) player, trusts him as they drink to excess, and then gets sexually assaulted (or, in his view, have consensual sex).  In this case, she gets dumped on her doorstep for two hours, passed out in 22 degree temps.  An iPhone likely captured some of this on video and is passed around.  Town folk side with the football player.  The girl's mom loses her job.  Charges are dropped, unlike in Steubenville,  even though authorities believe they had a strong case.  The boy is well-connected, the girl is not.  (Oh, on same night, a girl, 13, seems to have sex with a boy, 15.)  The family moves out of town, then their old house burns down for some reason.  The girl, who had been a cheerleader and beauty queen and got mainly A's in school,  tries to commit suicide twice.  Read it and weep.  Earlier story with photos.

Into the Woods

I guess I knew actor James Woods was that rare breed of conservative in Hollywood but didn't know he was quite this right-wing.  After all he rose to acclaim--and got an Oscar nod--in one of his early films, Salvador, directed by...Oliver Stone, a film that changed Stone's political outlook for good.  (Fine flick, by the way.)  But check out his verified Twitter feed for his failings against Obama and Obamacare just in the past week.

Spooky Halloween for Sure

This week's New Yorker and those scary Repubs.  Tombstones read "Health Care" and "Gun Control." The Nixon and Reagan masks in parades seem almost benign now.

American Officer Found Hanged in Egyptian Cell

Just out from Agence France-Presse:

Cairo — An American found hanged in his police cell in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya on Sunday was believed to have committed suicide, Egyptian security officials said. They said the body of James Henry, 55, who told authorities he was a retired officer, was found at noon at Ismailiya Awal police station. Henry had been detained in August for violating a curfew imposed because of the latest wave of political unrest sweeping Egypt.

He was stopped on the road between El-Arish and Rafah in North Sinai and told authorities he was on his way to the Gaza Strip.

Officials told AFP that a US embassy delegation had visited Henry in his cell last week.

His death comes a day after he was told authorities were extending his preventative detention by a further 30 days.

If At First You Don't Secede....

The great Garry Wills (until recently quite the moderate) with eye-opener at NYRB comparing certain aspects of today's revolting GOP to what happened before the Civil War.  Basically, a form of secession already taking place. UPDATE:  Below this, watch Bill Moyers on the same theme.

The presiding spirit of this neo-secessionism is a resistance to majority rule. We see this in the Senate, where a Democratic majority is resisted at every turn by automatic recourses to the filibuster. We see it in the attempt to repeal the seventeenth amendment, which allows a majority of voters to choose a state’s senators. The repealers want that choice to go back to the state legislatures, where they rule thanks to anti-majority gerrymandering.

The Old South went from virtual to actual secession only when the addition of non-slave Western states threatened their disproportionate hold on the Congress and the Court (which had been Southern in makeup when ruling on Dred Scott). It is difficult to conjecture what will happen if the modern virtual seceders do not get their way. Their anti-government rhetoric is reaching new intensity. Some would clearly rather ruin than be ruled by a “foreign-born Muslim.” What will the Republicans who are not fanatics, only cowards, do in that case?