Liars and Statistics

Yep. It's that time again to search out the bag-headed opinionating of Bush-lovers offering their increasingly shrill yowlings as they ignore the reports and refuse to recognize what the Bush administration and military officials are feveroushly trying to put out: a nascent communal civil war in Iraq.

Up now is a one Glenn Gross at, I'm not making this up, Let Freedom Ring Throughout the World. Glenn took some time a fews days ago to call John Murtha a liar for claiming that Iraq had fallen into civil war. And while it still may not be a full-blown civil war, the affirming evidence clearly indicates that it is at least a slow-burn, low level one. Gross certainly doesn't bother to offer up any evidence as to why Murtha is liar. Assuredly that is hard to come by. Perhaps its just one of those feel-good gut things, the kind of which O'Reilly has come to rely upon. There is precious little else by which one could be dissuaded from this notion.

Because today,we have this news,

A series of powerful explosions ripped through a Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad Sunday evening, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 200.

t was the deadliest series of attacks since the Feb. 22 bombing of the revered Askariya Shiite mosque in Samarra unleashed days of sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis that left at least 1,000 people dead.

Of course, this news is not much different than news from a couple of days ago,

explosions killed 11 people and wounded 19 - all civilians, police said. The U.S. military, meanwhile, confirmed that a mass abduction from a security firm was the work of kidnappers masquerading as Interior Ministry commandos.

Which is not much different from that of a few more days before that,

A car bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol exploded near a market in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing at least six people and injuring 23.

In eastern Baghdad, a suicide car bomber struck a police patrol near al-Mustansiriyah University, killing two policemen and wounding three.

Another bomb exploded as a police patrol drove through the northern Azamiyah neighborhood, killing a policeman and a civilian

A car bomb targeting another police patrol exploded in Baghdad's downtown Nidhal Street, wounding at least seven people

A roadside bomb exploded outside the blast walls surrounding the Buratha Shiite mosque in the northern Oteifiyah neighborhood

Two roadside bombs went off in Baghdad's dangerous Dora neighborhood. One targeted an Interior Ministry patrol, wounding one commando

Or a few days before that,

A series of suicide attacks, car bombs and mortar barrages rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 68 people and wounding scores as Iraq teetered on the brink of civil war. President Bush decried the violence between rival Muslim Sunni and Shiite sects.

Iraqis have suffered through days of reprisal killings and attacks on Sunni mosques since bombers blew apart the gold dome of the revered Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra on Wednesday. The Iraqi Cabinet said at least 379 people had been killed and 458 wounded in reprisal attacks.

Oh, and we should not forget this,

The top commander of the Iraqi army division in Baghdad was killed Monday when his car came under small-arms fire while traveling through the capital.

When even Bush is recognizing the secular nature of the continuous attacks of Sunni on Shiite and vice versa, one has to know that concerns are probably very serious. But the thrust of Glenn's pronouncements appears to be that if people will just stop lying about Iraq being in a civil war, then maybe it would stop looking like it is.

But things really take a twist later in the post when Glenn offers up evidence to counter the results of the Zogby poll of US troops stationed in Iraq who overshelmingly declared that it is time to get out:

72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year.

What does Glenn offer as counter evidence to this result, which he calls simply a "notion"? One Army reservist Adam Navarro who, it is said, is a "firm believer in the mission."

I just don't know how these guys cling to that unfurling thread that this administration has handled anything in Iraq well at all. Ignoring the tales of sectarian strife, which is obviously on the rise, and ignoring that the US military itself recognises the grave threat that this escalation represents, fellows like Glenn will instead choose to channel villians like Ann Coulter and call men like ex-Marine John Murtha a liar for stating what is obvious to anyone capable of simple arithmetic.