One of Ours

United States:
Deaths - 584 (Hostile Action: 394; Non-hostile causes: 190)
Injuries - 3,383 (Hostile Action: 2,949; Non-hostile causes: 434)

United Kingdom: Deaths - 58

Italy: Deaths - 17

Spain: Deaths - 8

Bulgaria: Deaths - 5

Ukraine: Deaths - 3

Thailand: Deaths - 2

Denmark: Deaths - 1

Estonia: Deaths - 1

Poland: Deaths - 1

Richard Clarke made his much-anticipated appearance before the 9/11 commission this afternoon and, right out of the box, delivered a stunning blow to the Bush administration -- the political equivalent of a first-round knockout.

The blow was so stunning, it took a while to realize that it was a blow. Clarke thanked the members for holding the hearings, saying they finally provided him "a forum where I can apologize" to the victims of 9/11 and their loved ones. He continued, addressing those relatives, many of whom were sitting in the hearing room:

Your government failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask for your understanding and for your forgiveness.

End of statement. Applause. KO...

The former BBC journalist who started the Hutton affair by claiming that the British government had sexed up WMD dossier that leading to the death of Dr Kelly now says the war in Iraq was just:

“One year on (since the war began), however the most important fact is that nobody’s worst fears on that wakeful night have come true. The vast majority of us, Iraqis, journalists, and Tony Blair alike, survived. Fedayeen guerrillas struck the coalition with small numbers, but there was virtually no real fighting with Sadam’s regular forces. The bombing of Baghdad looked scary on TV, but it didn’t even begin to approach the daily tonnage dropped on ,say, Hanoy[sic] during Vietnam, London or any German city during the second world war.

‘Shock and awe’ lasted an hour and a half, rather than the promised three days. And with only a few ghastly exceptions, the targeting, in the capital at least, was very precise. Colleagues who arrived after the war was over kept asking us where all the destroyed buildings were.

"There never was a military stalemate, a refugee crisis, a hundred thousand civilian dead…”

“That old doom-mongers favourite, the revolt of the “Arab street” across the Middle East, has remained as much of a mirage as any weapon of mass destruction.”

Gilligan is largely critical of Blair’s reasons for going to war, rather than the war itself. “Right war, wrong reasons” he says:

“More than anything else, what discredited the war was the rush to conflict, the need to claim Iraq as a pressing danger. From this need stemmed all the Government’s most famous tabloid half-truths and non-truths. No one I know ever doubted that Sadam had WMD, or could rebuild them quickly. It was a perfectly fair inference to draw from his behaviour, even, if it now seems to have been wrong. But no expert, spook, or politician I ever met, apart from a few New Labour androids, believed Iraq’s WMD were a threat “current and serious” enough to require military action in March 2003.”

It is a pleasure to read some fair and balanced reporting from an ex BBC man, particularly after the bashing he received during the Hutton affair, even losing his job. One wonders if he would be allowed to be so fair and balanced if he was still at the BBC.

A slim majority of Army soldiers in Iraq -- 52 percent -- reported that their morale was low, and three-fourths of them said they felt poorly led by their officers, according to a survey taken at the end of the last summer and released yesterday by the Army.

In addition, seven in 10 of those surveyed characterized the morale of their fellow soldiers as low or very low. The problems were most pronounced among lower-ranking troops and those in reserve units...

...Patterson said he could not place the numbers in historical context because similar surveys have not been conducted before. "This is the first time we've ever gone into an active combat theater and asked soldiers how they are doing, so we have no comparative data,"...