Elephant in the Living Room

It's the evening of the first Presidential debates for this election and the subject Bush and Kerry will "debate" tonight are foreign policy and homeland security. How much of what's *really* going in Iraq right now does anyone think the President will want to talk about?

What's really going on? Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi emailed his friends the following from Baghdad:

Iraqis like to call this mess "the situation." When asked "how are things?" they reply: "the situation is very bad."

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

You won't hear Bush or anyone is his administration talking about any of this.

And there are these stats I'd never seen before:

The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day--over 700 to date--and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

I don't know where to start. Over 700 cops killed? We certainly never see those figure. If we add up the deaths of our troops, of our allies and if we include Iraqi police and military on our side, how many deaths would that be? (I'm not even counting Iraqi civilians and U.S. and foreign "contractors.") Does *anyone* know?

Why are we only concerned with our own bodycount? Of course, some people would like to see less focus on that number, too.

Sounds like things are out of control. Do you think you'll hear Mr. Bush say that tonight? No, it'll be, "Things are going well."

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)