TIME’S COMICS REVIEWER, Andrew Arnold, gives a boffo review to Ted Rall’s book. He says “Rall reveals that ‘contrary to the propaganda back home, the U.S.A.F. bombed anything and everything.'” If you’re wondering how that can possibly be true given that the latest civilian casualty estimates are even lower than we’d heard before, well, I guess that means that we were just bombing, you know, the enemy. Apparently the Afghan people knew this, too, as we also learn from Rall that “Reasoning that the odds of being hit are slim, people learn to disassociate the sound of bombs from death. Instead they worry about the gangs of heavily-armed thugs who rob and murder with no recourse.”

In other words, Afghans are more worried about the local thugs than about the U.S. bombs that Rall is decrying, since they recognize that they’re not much of a threat to civilians. Afghan civilians have learned to “disassociate the sound of bombs from death.” Rall apparently hasn’t, given his complaints about the bombing (and Arnold’s statement that we bombed “Afghanistan” rather than “Al Qaeda” or “The Taliban” suggest that he’s too dumb, or too dishonest, to figure out what the Afghans knew). Yet neither Rall, nor Arnold, notices the contradiction. No surprise there. Interestingly, I didn’t even know about this until I noticed a reference in Flit. I guess the “ignore Ted Rall” campaign has been working. Too bad Time didn’t get the word.

By the way, there’s a click-through to email Arnold.

UPDATE: Bill Herbert fact-checks Ted Rall’s ass and includes a link to an email exchange he’s had with Rall over Afghan casualties and Rall’s inability to find a source to support his rather inflated claims. He also discusses Rall’s latest column.