I swear, conspiracy theorists are dumb as posts

Here's the latest one: Did you know that the actual U.S. military death toll in Iraq is 12,000?

We have received copies of manifests from the MATS that show far more bodies shipped into Dover AFP than are reported officially. The actual death toll is in excess of 10,000. (See the official records at the end of this piece.)... When our research is complete, and watertight, we will publish the results along with the sources

Yeah, I'm holding my breath.

The government gets away with these huge lies because they claim, falsely, that only soldiers actually killed on the ground in Iraq are reported. The dying and critically wounded are listed as en route to military hospitals outside of the country and not reported on the daily postings. Anyone who dies just as the transport takes off from the Baghdad airport is not listed and neither are those who die in the US military hospitals.

This claim is itself false.

It's true that injuries and deaths caused by non-hostile action -- a soldier getting run over by a truck in his convoy, for instance -- aren't counted as combat casualties.

The reasoning for that is that accidents happen, war or no war, and it's wrong to attribute a death to a given war simply because it happened to occur during that war.

That rationale isn't perfect: Operations in a war zone are probably inherently more risky than the same operation in peacetime, in a well-controlled domestic environment. So there are likely to be more accidents in Iraq than the unit would have experienced back home.

But you have to draw the line somewhere, and the overall reasoning is sound. Accidents are a separate category from KIA and WIA.

And even though they're not counted as combat deaths, they are counted. Noncombat deaths are listed on the weekly report under a separate column.

The only category that isn't reported in any coherent way is soldiers who are injured in non-combat situations. Estimates put that number at around 15,000, for what it's worth.

Another category that isn't counted is psychiatric issues that manifest themselves after a soldier leaves Iraq. So a soldier that kills himself after arriving back home doesn't count against the Iraq total. That will tend to understate the total human toll of Iraq, but again the basis is reasonable: how is the military supposed to determine that an action taken after leaving Iraq is related to Iraq? And to what degree? How much time and effort should it put into such classifications?

So one can plausibly argue that the true human toll of Iraq is not reflected in the official casualty figures. But to claim the Pentagon is hiding 8,000 deaths is ludicrous. It doesn't matter what you think about what Bush would be willing to do; it's physically impossible.

If there were 8,000 uncounted deaths, that would mean an average of 160 families per state wondering why their kid's name never appeared in the newspaper as a war casualty.

In addition, these soldiers come from units. The soldiers live together at home as well as fight together abroad. They know each other; the families hang out. They talk. If a given unit lost 20 people but only 5 were listed as official casualties, everyone would know. For your conspiracy to work, EVERYONE in the unit, their families, friends and up and down the chain of command would have to be in on the secret. Which just isn't going to happen.

When constructing conspiracy theories, maybe these folks should construct ones that are actually plausible.

casualties, conspiracy theories, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Are large sums of cash illegal?

Apparently, yes.

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime.

Clearly, the details are important here. But shouldn't the money -- or at least the owner -- be actually connected to a crime before police can seize his property?

crime, midtopia

More excessive secrecy

In example #2,912 of how the Bush administration has a heard time learning:

The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive. The archive is a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University.

"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," wrote William Burr, a senior analyst at the archive who compiled the report. " . . . The Pentagon is now trying to keep secret numbers of strategic weapons that have never been classified before."

Aargh! Stop it!

National Security Archive, Bush, secrecy, politics, midtopia

As the pundits turn, insiders seek to sway Bush

A couple of interesting developments.

Publicly, conservative pundits are rounding on Bush with increasing ferocity.

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, James Baker leads a rescue effort:

Amid the highly charged political infighting in Washington over what to do in Iraq, you might be excused for not noticing that a bipartisan commission quietly started work last spring with a mandate to help the Bush administration rethink its policy toward the war. Of course, anything labeled "bipartisan commission" seems almost guaranteed to be ignored by a highly partisan White House that is notoriously hostile to outside advice and famously devoted to "staying the course." But what makes this particular commission hard to dismiss is that it is led by perhaps the one man who might be able to break through the tight phalanx of senior officials who advise the president and filter his information. That person is the former secretary of state, Republican insider, and consigliere of the Bush family, James A. Baker III.

Since March, Baker, backed by a team of experienced national-security hands, has been busily at work trying to devise a fresh set of policies to help the president chart a new course in--or, perhaps, to get the hell out of--Iraq. But as with all things involving James Baker, there's a deeper political agenda at work as well. "Baker is primarily motivated by his desire to avoid a war at home--that things will fall apart not on the battlefield but at home. So he wants a ceasefire in American politics," a member of one of the commission's working groups told me. Specifically, he said, if the Democrats win back one or both houses of Congress in November, they would unleash a series of investigative hearings on Iraq, the war on terrorism, and civil liberties that could fatally weaken the administration and remove the last props of political support for the war, setting the stage for a potential Republican electoral disaster in 2008. "I guess there are people in the [Republican] party, on the Hill and in the White House, who see a political train wreck coming, and they've called in Baker to try to reroute the train."

I wish Baker well; I respect the deft foreign-policy hand of Bush the Elder, and Lord knows someone needs to break through the barriers surrounding this administration and convince them that their chosen strategy isn't working.

If Bush persists on his current course, it would seem to be only a matter of time before the Republican-led Congress tosses him overboard in order to save their own skins in November -- while non-Congressional conservatives and other party operatives throw him overboard in order to strengthen their hand for 2008. The next two years may feature Bush being used as a whipping boy not just by the left but also by the right, as they look past him and try to figure out a way to detach the anchors of his presence from their political ambitions.

Iraq, Baker, Bush, politics, midtopia

Relearning expensive lessons

One thing that bothered me about the Israeli campaign in Lebanon was the clear belief that they could win largely through the use of airpower. I'd end up talking to myself or yelling at the television: "Don't you guys read history books?!?"

I'm an ex-tanker, and some of my best friends were groundpounders, so maybe I'm biased. But if there's one thing that's clear from reading military history, it's that airpower alone does not win wars -- however often the Air Force commanders make that argument, and however enticing the idea is to a casualty-wary politician.

I missed this article when it first came out, but it sums up the situation very nicely.

Military historians have a name for the logic behind Israel's military campaign in Lebanon. It's called the "strategic bombing fallacy." Almost since the dawn of the age of military air power, strategists have been tempted by the prospect that the bombing of "strategic" targets such as infrastructure and transportation hubs could inflict such pain on a population that it would turn against its leaders and get them to surrender or compromise.

Unfortunately -- as the United States itself discovered during World War II and Vietnam, to cite just two examples -- strategic bombing has almost never worked. Far from bringing about the intended softening of the opposition, bombing tends to rally people behind their own leaders and cause them to dig in against outsiders who, whatever the justification, are destroying their homeland.

What's surprising is that the above fallacy is very well known -- or should be to anyone who pays attention to military history. It astonishes me that an organization as practical and experienced as the Israeli military would fall for such a thing.

Is it me, or is the entire world suffering from a giant case of the ignorant stupids?

airpower, Lebanon, Israel, politics, midtopia

A troubled Experiment

One of my earliest posts, back in March, was about the troubles at the Center for the American Experiment here in the Twin Cities. Basically, switching from "conservative think tank" to "partisan propaganda-spewing electoral machine" was a hugely expensive failure.

Now Minnesota Monthly magazine has an in-depth exploration of what happened, and where the Center is going now -- mostly, adopting a less-strident tone and seeking to rebuild its mindshare as it tries to pay off more than $300,000 in debts.

I respected the previous incarnation of the CAE. I despised the Meeks version. Let's hope the Center's founder, Mitch Pearlstein, can resurrect the good and leave the partisan toxic waste behind.

Meeks, Pearlstein, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Iraq and Vietnam

An entire cottage industry of blogs has sprung up that try to compare Iraq to Vietnam, from any number of political perspectives. Iraq is another quagmire; Iraq, like Vietnam, will be lost by the antiwar protesters; Iraq isn't even close to being Vietnam because we've had far fewer troops killed so far.

Most of it is noise. There are ways in which the two wars are comparable, but it's not the common ones you keep hearing.

Quagmire
While there is a rational argument to be made that Iraq is an unwinnable mess given our current resource allocation, the fundamentals of the situation bear little resemblance to Vietnam, where South Vietnam faced an insurgency/invasion backed by a dedicated nation state that was itself supported and protected by the Soviets and Chinese. That's far more resources and force than this insurgency will ever be able to apply.

Losing the war at home
This is a common trope, but it ignores two things.

1. Coverage of antiwar protesters tends to increase support for any given war, since many people are turned off by the often anarchic tactics of such protesters.

2. Policy and opinion shape each other. If a war is going well, antiwar protesters would be marginalized. If a war is going poorly, they gain credibility. The protesters themselves don't sway opinion very much; they are more a symptom than a cause of falling support.

Casualty rates
Comparing casualty rates is silly, as if every conflict carries the same geopolitical interest, or as if it's not worth complaining until we've flushed X number of lives down the rathole.

The only calculation that matters is this: Are our objectives achievable at an acceptable cost. That calculation is different for each conflict, turning as it does on the importance of the conflict and the scope and achievability of the objectives.

"They will have died in vain"
The silliest argument of all for reinforcing failure. We've already had people die in this war; if we pull out now we'll be saying they "died in vain."

In Vietnam we lost 58,000 soldiers -- not to mention the million or so dead Vietnamese combatants on both sides -- and lost. In the simplest analysis, we could have achieved the exact same result at far lower cost had we pulled out after the first advisor was killed back in the 50s. Arguably the result would have actually been better, because we would not have staked our national prestige on the conflict and not have had to endure the disintegration of our armed forces that followed Vietnam.

I'm not saying we should pull out every time the going gets rough. I'm merely trying to point out the absurdity of casualty comparisons or the "died in vain" argument. Using that logic, 58,000 people died in vain in Vietnam. Had we pulled out earlier, tens of thousands of people *wouldn't* have died in vain.

So what are the parallels to Vietnam? This: Both wars had at best a murky connection to any compelling national interest, were entered into without building and sustaining public support, undertaken with inadequate planning and fought with a flawed strategy.

As Churchill learned in the Dardanelles campaign during World War I, reinforcing failure merely creates an even bigger and bloodier failure. The relevant question here isn't "have we bled enough". It's "is our objective achievable at acceptable cost."

Given our refusal to sent sufficient troops to actually achieve our objectives, I think the first question is more relevant than the second. We have already decided there is a cost we are not willing to pay; and given that, our objective is not achievable.

And you can't blame the Dems for this one.

Vietnam, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Some home truths about our Iraq strategy

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine had an excellent piece on the progress of the Iraqi army, from a reporter who traveled to Anbar province to see them in action.

Some excerpts:

Anbar has long been what the military calls an “economy of force” operation, which is a polite way of saying that troop requirements elsewhere in Iraq have led American commanders to employ fewer forces in the province than the situation warrants. As a consequence, counterinsurgency operations have taken on the quality of a whack-a-mole arcade game. Every time the Americans have massed force to put out one fire, they have created a vacuum elsewhere that the insurgents have rushed to fill. When the Marines gathered forces to clear Falluja in 2004, they drew troops from the Haditha area, where the insurgents promptly moved in and executed the defenseless local police near the town’s soccer field. The Marines returned in strength to Haditha and established several forward bases, including the one at Barwana, but then many of the troops were sent to the far west when commanders decided to clear Al Qaim, near the Syrian border. And the insurgents filtered back to Haditha.

Gosh. How surprising. Been saying that for years.

Some of the Marine officers I talked with were frank about the need for more American troops. Lt. Col. Ronald Gridley, executive officer with Regimental Combat Team 7, which has responsibility for a major swath of the province, told me during a visit to the unit’s headquarters at Al Asad that the regiment has recommended that additional troops be allocated to its section of Anbar. A battalion or two, he said, would help a great deal. “What we recommend and what we get is going to be two different things,” Colonel Gridley said. “In our perfect world, we could use some more infantrymen to be able to patrol the streets and partner with the Iraqi Army.”

But wait. I thought the commanders were getting all the troops they needed?

Officially, the Bush administration’s strategy is: Clear, hold and build. But with limited American forces to do any clearing, the war in western Iraq looks much more like hang on and hand over. Hang on against an insurgency that seems to be laying roadside bombs as quickly as they are discovered, and hand over to an Iraqi military that is still a work in progress.

Yep. We have refused to commit the resources necessary to execute our stated strategy. Not sure what you would call that, but it sure isn't "success."

The Iraqi Army itself, while all-volunteer and reasonably well motivated, is hobbled by corruption, bureaucracy and a society lacking in some basic infrastructure.

Greenwood explained that the pay issues in Haditha were quite common. In the Anbar region, about 550 Iraqi soldiers received no pay for June, while another 2,200 were receiving less pay than they were entitled to by rank. During one of his many trips to Baghdad to wrestle with the Iraqi bureaucracy, Greenwood was told that 19 men who were owed back pay had mysteriously vanished from the rolls of trained soldiers — and the only way they could get back on the payroll was to go through boot camp all over again.

Logistics was another of Greenwood’s worries. American commanders in Baghdad had pushed the Iraqis to take over responsibility for their own logistics, but that led to cases in which Iraqi soldiers had received spoiled meat and rotten vegetables. ...

Each month, Iraqi soldiers are granted about a week’s leave to deliver their pay to their families, who may live hundreds of miles away, a tradition that reflects the lack of an effective banking system in Iraq. With all the dangers, hardships and problems in receiving pay, the soldiers do not always come back.

The article notes that the people on the ground are professional, capable and motivated. But the problems appear to be endemic and pervasive -- and getting worse rather than better.

This is not winning. This is hanging on -- while the insurgency gets stronger.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

The reviews are getting worse

As we march toward the November elections, the reviews of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq are getting worse.

Joe Lieberman turns around and bites the GOP hand that was wooing him, joining Hillary Clinton in saying Donald Rumsfeld should resign.

"With all respect to Don Rumsfeld, who has done a grueling job for six years, we would benefit from new leadership to work with our military in Iraq," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Lieberman said the Bush administration should have sent more troops into Iraq "to secure the country."

"We had a naive vision that the Iraqis were going to embrace us and then go on and live happily ever after," he said.

It's kind of sad when it takes a senior senator three years to reach the same conclusion many of us reached soon after the invasion.

Meanwhile, Chuck Hagel says the GOP has lost its way.

"First time I voted was in 1968 on top of a tank in the Mekong Delta," said Hagel, a Vietnam veteran. "I voted a straight Republican ticket. The reason I did is because I believe in the Republican philosophy of governance. It's not what it used to be. I don't think it's the same today."

Hagel asked: "Where is the fiscal responsibility of the party I joined in '68? Where is the international engagement of the party I joined _ fair, free trade, individual responsibility, not building a bigger government, but building a smaller government?"

His frustration does not lead him to think Democrats offer a better alternative. But Hagel wants to see the GOP return to its basic beliefs.

"I think we've lost our way," Hagel said. "And I think the Republicans are going to be in some jeopardy for that and will be held accountable."

Besides opinion polls showing sagging support for our strategy in Iraq, there might be a couple of other explanations for the increasingly pessimistic views.

One is a NYT Magazine piece from this Sunday, which I'll blog about next.

The other is the increasing opinion among security experts that we're losing. Foreign Policy magazine surveyed 100 experts -- conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat. A whopping 84 percent said we're not winning the fight against terror. Most were critical of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, our overreliance on force, and many other aspects of our antiterror strategy.

The list of respondents is here.

Administration supporters like to criticize their opponents for not having an alternative plan. That's false on the face of it: Lots of plans exist, from "send more troops" to "pull out now." But the argument skips over the real issue. A basic military maxim is "don't reinforce failure." Continuing to tout a failing strategy -- and that's essentially what "stay the course" means -- is a worse failure. You may not like the alternative options, but if the choice is between a failed plan and trying something else, you try something else.

Hagel, Lieberman, terrorism, Rumsfeld, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Bush signs pension bill

Back in May I lauded a Bush administration proposal on pension reform.

Today, Bush signed the pension bill into law.

It doesn't mirror the president's proposals exactly, but the big stuff is there: stricter funding rules and greater disclosure. Most of the noise and criticism surrounding the bill have focused on Congressional provisions, such as special treatment for airlines and defense contractors and legislation covering cash-balance plans.

Overall it appears to be a decent bill that will force companies to make good on the promises they make their workers -- and hopefully prompt them to make more realistic promises in the future.

pensions, Bush, politics, midtopia

GOP losing support in the heartland

David Broder lays it out:

What I heard here -- and in subsequent interviews at the National Governors Association convention in Charleston, S.C. -- from one Republican after another signaled serious trouble for the GOP across a broad swath of states from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma in key midterm election contests for House, Senate and governor.

The impression these Republicans had is that support for GOP candidates had nose-dived this summer -- in part because of the chaos conveyed by the daily televised scenes of destruction in Iraq and Lebanon and in part because of the dismal reputation built by the Republican Congress that is home to many of the endangered GOP candidates.

Remember, this is Republicans saying the GOP will lose big.

He even touches on Minnesota, noting that Mark Kennedy badly trails Amy Klobuchar in the Senate race.

It's only August, and never underestimate the ability of Democrats to fumble away a sure thing. But the signs increasingly point to a GOP massacre in November.

Mark Kennedy, Klobuchar, Minnesota, Ohio, politics, midtopia

Harris' destroying touch

Katherine Harris' Senate campaign makes another misstep.

In the U.S. Senate primary, Rep. Katherine Harris has been touting key political endorsements from fellow Republican lawmakers. The problem is, some of them never endorsed her.

Several members of the U.S. House called the Harris campaign to complain Wednesday after the St. Petersburg Times notified them of the endorsements listed on Harris' Web site. Minutes later, their names were removed.

Apparently any sort of connection to Harris is enough to bring down doom. The frontrunner in the GOP primary to replace Harris in her House seat has apparently self-destructed after an anecdote about blacks' swimming ability was caught on video.

This is the state that we let decide presidential elections?

Tramm Hudson, Harris, politics, midtopia

Judge rules NSA wiretapping unconstitutional

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ruling was in response to an ACLU lawsuit.

She said the taps violate free speech and privacy rights. I'm not so sure about the free speech argument. The privacy argument is stronger, though a lot of people argue that the idea of a right to privacy is a myth.

In any case, this bumps the pressure on the government up several notches. I presume the government will appeal the decision, which could lead to a Supreme Court ruling depending on what the appeals court does.

Update: The Detroit Free Press has a bio of the judge.

Update II: Here's the text of the ruling, in PDF format.

Update III: The link is updated to note that the judge issued an immediate injunction against the taps, meaning this will be decided very quickly at the Appeals level.

ACLU, NSA, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Mideast moves

The Lebanese Army began deploying into south Lebanon today.

In Marjayoun, a key town near the Israeli border that was briefly occupied by Israeli forces during their incursion into Lebanon, flatbed trucks carrying 20 Lebanese tanks arrived early Thursday along with a dozen trucks loaded with troops and hoisting Lebanese flags.

Residents welcomed the troops in Marjayoun and nearby villages, a largely Christian area where Hezbollah's Shiite Muslim militants have little support.

"I feel safer now," said Shadi Shammas, a 30-year-old Marjayoun native. "The army before was not like now. Now, if Hezbollah has guns, the army can take them and that wasn't the case before."

Lebanese troops are in Marjayoun for the first time in 40 years.

The deployment has been accompanied by some fiery anti-Israeli rhetoric, but at the moment actions are the important thing.

Separately, Palestinian President Mahmous Abbas said he struck a deal with Gaza militants to stop firing rockets into Israel.

And he said more:

In his speech, Abbas said the Palestinians were putting together a plan to be presented to the United Nations to try to revive the stalled peace process. He gave no details about the plan but said he was working on it with Arab states.

Sounds like the talk-violence cycle in the Mideast is coming around to a talk phase.

Abbas, Gaza, Palestine, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, politics, midtopia

Israel begins handing over positions

The Lebanese government finally approved plans to deploy troops to South Lebanon, and Israel began handing positions over to the United Nations. The Israeli Army said it had already handed over half of the Lebanese territory it holds.

As expected, the developing reality is not perfect:

The Lebanese Cabinet decision fell short of agreement on disarming the Shiite Muslim militant group, which has insisted it has the right to defend Lebanese territory as long as Israeli troops remain in the country.

But we shouldn't let the perfect get in the way of the pretty good. Hezbollah is being ejected from south Lebanon, arms or no arms. And Lebanon is insisting that the government will have a monopoly on the use of force.

In a televised address, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora praised Lebanon's resistance, saying it showed that Israel's military was "no longer a force that cannot be resisted, an army that cannot be defeated."

He said Lebanon has the right to take charge of its destiny and warned of foreign meddling that has made the country into a battleground for Israelis, Palestinians, Syrians and Iranians over the decades.

The government ordered the army to "insure respect" for the Blue Line, the U.N.-demarcated border between Lebanon and Israel, and "apply the existing laws with regard to any weapons outside the authority of the Lebanese state."

This is progress.

The Lebanese are assembled north of the Litani River and will begin crossing into south Lebanon on Thursday.

Lebanon, Hezbollah, Israel, politics, midtopia

Moderate support

Just as the netroots left of the Democratic Party led a charge to unseat Joe Lieberman, the conservative Club For Growth -- fresh off a victory against moderate Republican Joe Schwarz in Michigan -- is leading a charge against Rhode Island's Republican senator, Lincoln Chafee.

One difference between Chafee and Lieberman, however, is that if Chafee loses the primary to his conservative opponent, his seat is almost guaranteed to go to a Democrat. The Club For Growth figures that's a small price to pay for ideological purity.

I wrote a few weeks ago about what moderates need to do to put more moderates in power. One of the tactics was to support the moderate candidates of both parties in their primaries, so that as much as possible the general election becomes a contest between two moderates. That way we win no matter what the outcome.

The Rhode Island race would seem to be the perfect example of this: Support Chafee in his primary fight so that we don't much care who wins in November.

Some people will note tactical considerations that complicate the question. I've also written that I consider the November elections a referendum on the ruling party, and in that context the Republicans deserve to lose big; I want the Democrats to take over either the House or the Senate, and I wouldn't weep if they captured both. Given that, wouldn't it be better to have the seat go Democratic, improving the chances that the Dems could take over the Senate?

I think this comes down to an exercise in principle and risk management. What's more important to you -- Democratic control of the Senate, or maximizing the number of moderates in Congress? If the former, hope Chafee loses the nomination. If the latter, help him win it. Because I would prefer to not even risk an ideological conservative getting into that seat. Even if you're a strong Democrat, showing support for Chafee is just good politics. If he wins, he'll remember the cross-aisle backing. Even if he loses, it sends a message to other moderates that there's a reservoir of support they can draw on to counter the partisan party bases.

Chaffee, politics, midtopia

As of today, 12 planets

A while back I wrote about the debate over Pluto's planetary status. This was followed by a proposal by some astronomers to strip Pluto of its designation.

Well today, the International Astronomical Union went the other way. It's executive panel has proposed a definition of "planet" that is expected to be approved by the membership. It adds three new planets to our solar system -- including Pluto's largest moon, Charon.

The panel suggests retaining Pluto and immediately adding three new planets to the nine that are familiar to any schoolchild: Ceres, currently considered a large asteroid; Charon, now considered a moon of Pluto; and Xena, a recently discovered object that is larger than Pluto.

The definition of "planet" is complicated but interesting:

The proposal defines a planet as an object that circles the sun and is massive enough that its own gravitational forces compress it into a roughly spherical shape. Depending on its composition, a planet would have to be at least roughly 250 to 500 miles in diameter to qualify. It designates a new subcategory of planet, the ``pluton," a Pluto-like planet that takes at least 200 years to circle the sun. Pluto, Charon, and Xena are all plutons, and scientists expect many more to be discovered. Under the proposal, Ceres is an ordinary planet.

Moons are excluded from planetary status, using a criterion that depends on the relative mass of two bodies that are gravitationally tied. If one body is much smaller than the other, then it is considered a moon. Pluto and Charon are closer in mass, and so they are dubbed a double planet. The Earth's moon is round and much larger than Pluto, but it is so much smaller than Earth that it is considered a moon, not a planet.

250 miles in diameter isn't very big from a solar perspective -- the Earth, for instance, is about 8,000 miles across. But at least the definition is clear, even if it changes the colloquial meaning of the word "planet", making it a far less exclusive club. Indeed, astronomers expect to discover even more bodies meeting the criteria for planet as new and more powerful telescopes probe the outer reaches of the solar system.

One strength of the scientific method is that old dogmas are shed relatively easily in the face of new evidence. This is a prime example of that. I grew up learning about 9 planets; my children will grow up learning about 12 or more. And human knowledge marches on.

astronomy, solar system, Pluto, planets, science, midtopia

The right flood insurance ruling

A judge in a Katrina-related case has ruled that insurance policies that don't cover flood damage don't, well, cover flood damage.

There is some legitimate complaint about the ambiguity of the policy in question. And agreeing on what is flood damage and what is wind damage can be a contentious matter, with the insurance company wanting to attribute all of it to flood damage (and thus not covered) and the homeowner wanting to attribute none of it to flood damage (and thus be fully covered).

But insurance works by covering specific risks for a specific amount for a specific premium. The system breaks down if insurers can be forced to cover uncovered costs after the fact.

If people want to be covered for flood damage, buy flood insurance.

Speaking of flood insurance, it's time to end the taxpayer subsidy of such insurance. Such insurance should be market-priced. If homeowners can't afford those prices, or If private insurers are unwilling to sell such policies at an affordable price, perhaps that's a sign that people shouldn't be building homes in flood plains and hurricane-prone coastal zones.

A positive side effect of such a policy would be the reversion of many fragile coastal and riparian areas to their natural state, providing habitat for animals and buffer zones for rivers and coastlines -- making future flooding and storms less severe and costly.

flooding, insurance, Katrina, politics, midtopia

George Will: John Kerry was right

You know things are going badly when you see a headline like that.

[The foiling of the London plot] has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Did the world just shake for a moment?

Will quotes the Weekly Standard capturing a beautifully insane response by a "senior administration official":

"The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work."

What? As Will says:

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work."

Yep. I've been saying that all along.

George Will, terrorism, Kerry, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Israel begins pullout from Lebanon

Even though the Lebanese army has yet to cross into southern Lebanon, Israel has begun to leave certain areas and thin out its forces elsewhere.

Hezbollah fired 10 rockets yesterday, but none reached Israel and the ceasefire continues to hold.

Lebanon is under strong pressure to fulfill its agreement and take control of southern Lebanon. The latest timetable indicates they might be ready to do so by the end of the week.

So we wait.

Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, politics, midtopia