SURVEY SAYS: MASS MURDERER:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein’s government may have executed 61,000 Baghdad residents, a number significantly higher than previously believed, according to a survey obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

The bloodiest massacres of Saddam’s 23-year presidency occurred in Iraq’s Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, but the Gallup Baghdad Survey data indicates the brutality extended strongly into the capital as well.

The survey, which the polling firm planned to release on Tuesday, asked 1,178 Baghdad residents in August and September whether a member of their household had been executed by Saddam’s regime. According to Gallup, 6.6 percent said yes.

The polling firm took metropolitan Baghdad’s population — 6.39 million — and average household size — 6.9 people — to calculate that 61,000 people were executed during Saddam’s rule. Most are believed to have been buried in mass graves.

The U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq has said that at least 300,000 people are buried in mass graves in Iraq. Human rights officials put the number closer to 500,000, and some Iraqi political parties estimate more than 1 million were executed.

Rather a lot, really.

LT SMASH REPORTS that Al Qaeda is abandoning Afghanistan, and sees this as good for the war effort.

Meanwhile Adam Yoshida needs to take a chill pill. He writes:

Sometimes I think that the treason is so deeply ingrained in our society that nothing short of martial law, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the repeal of Posse Comitatus will do. Sometimes I think that we will need to think to the Revolution, where Tories and other traitors were dealt with harshly by a righteous people. I hope that I am wrong, but I do not deny the possibility.

That’s a terrible idea. I’d call it an unAmerican idea, but in fact we did things like this in the Civil War, and in World Wars I and II. But it’s wrong. Although the actual point of his post is to suggest less-drastic means of putting pressure on the anti-war movement (means that, in fact, remind me of things that the Left did in the 1960s and — just ask Al Sharpton — more recently than that) I’m utterly against that sort of thing. It’s wrong, and we don’t need it anyway. We’re winning this war.

THE MEDICARE PHOTO ISSUE seems to be taking off. . . .

THE HOWARD DEAN SEALED-RECORDS ISSUE is hurting him, according to Howard Fineman:

Is Howard Dean ready for prime time? I’m not so sure after watching him handle—if that is the word—the issue that has taken possession of his campaign this week: the 10-year seal he placed on the records of his 12-year tenure as governor of Vermont.

As Fineman notes, this isn’t a big story, and probably doesn’t deserve to be. But if the press decides that Dean can’t be trusted, it’ll hurt him later — though more in the general election than in the primaries, I suspect.

MAX BOOT ON GOING IT ALONE:

I write today in defense of unilateralism. I know there are many who will want to pillory any country that refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol, that breaks fundamental economic accords and that sends its troops to fight Muslims abroad without United Nations authorization. To them I say: Give the Europeans a break. They have good reasons for doing what they’re doing.

Europeans? No, that’s not a misprint. The Bush administration gets all the grief for its supposed unilateralism, but the actions in question have all been taken by European governments.

Maybe we can all be unilateral together.

THE SCRUTINEER says “three strikes for Albion’s apparatchiks:”

During the latter half of the 19th century, Russian literary critics increasingly evaluated fiction by a standard of political/social/religious “truth” rather than artistic merit. Put another way, they became more interested in ideological content than with form, and cruder critics seemed to regard literature as little more than an allegorical version of political tract-writing. I don’t think they used the term “political correctness,” but it would have fit their method of analysis.

Contemporary British critics are doing their best to set an altogether lower standard of politically-driven stupidity.

You can follow the link and see if you agree.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS, a collection of business- and economics-related blog posts, is up. Broaden your blog horizons!

WINDS OF CHANGE has its war news roundup online, including more information on the CERP program, which appears to be being mishandled at great cost to the Iraq reconstruction efforts.

As I note below, this is awfully important. I’d like to see it get at least as much attention as, say, the turkey story.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE IS STATING THE OBVIOUS: But he says it well.

UPDATE: Followup here.

“THE LIBERAL WHO CRIED WOLF” — SpinSanity says that MoveOn’s claims of Bush dishonesty are bogus, and sufficiently so that they probably do more harm to the credibility of Bush’s critics than to Bush: “In short, with The Daily Mislead, MoveOn has become the leader of a new school of liberal criticism that seeks to brand every policy disagreement with President Bush as a broken promise or lie. These loose accusations trivialize charges of dishonesty, reducing them to little more than another partisan spin tactic.”

Somewhere, Karl Rove is smiling.

ATTY. GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT: Soft on terror?

JONATHAN RAUCH writes that Howard Dean is no George McGovern. “Republicans chortling that Dean would be the next McGovern had better watch out: He may be the next Clinton.”

I think that Dean is a lot tougher, and Bush less tough, than a lot of Republicans would like to believe. It’s still Bush’s election to lose — but he can lose it.

MICKEY KAUS says that swing voters aren’t dead yet.

ELECTRONIC VOTING: Robert X. Cringely says it’s no surprise that there are lots of problems:

This isn’t politics (at least not in this particular column) it’s engineering. And one thing engineers of great big IT systems know is that they are never on time, never on budget, and sometimes don’t work at all.

Read the whole thing. He does think that a paper trail is important.

IT’S PLEDGE WEEK over at Andrew Sullivan’s again. I don’t do those, but feel free to hit the Amazon or Paypal tipjar if you like. I won’t mind!