let's do the numbers

What’s in a surge?

Buried at the bottom of a New York Times article on the confirmation hearings of General George “two-thirds of all dead soldiers in Iraq died on my watch” Casey to become Army Chief of Staff was a short paragraph pointing out that the so-called surge of 21,500 troops will require an additional 15,000 support troops (according to the Congressional Budget Office).

Surprise, surprise—Bush lied. His escalation tallies approximately 36,500 soldiers and marines, which makes it more like the numbers suggested in Fred Kagan’s American Enterprise Institute plan unveiled last month, and noticeably more than the 30,000 John “asshole” McCain said was really the amount needed to “succeed,” or whatever he calls it.

Will we see a top of the page story about the real size of Bush’s escalation? Or the additional $20 billion the support troops will cost? Will we see any story on how the number of troops Senator McCain likes to cling to for future CYA is actually being deployed now?

Breath not being held.

(update: escalation could be as high as 48,000)


Blood and oil

Exxon/Mobile announced on Thursday that it had netted a cool $39.5 billion in 2006, an amount NBC’s Casey Stengel Brian Williams described as “The biggest ever corporate profit that would be in the history of corporate profits.” That means the oil giant made something like $107 million in profit every single day last year. . .

. . . which is just a little more than half of what the US spends each day in Iraq.


And one more number. . .

3,084