I heard Durbin just reprimanded Ivins for caving in to the Republicans. Maybe I didn't.

She can apologize all she wants but that doesn't change the fact, nor will it EVER change the fact that she is a total, complete dumbass...

I'd like to state, for the record, that not one person in the whole damn South actually talks like Maohlly Ahvans. She's a fake and a phoney and a liar through and through. To hell with her and to hell with her "apology."

Yeah, I found it odd that she apologized, since this has been those "facts" that some on the left casually toss around despite knowing that it's utter BS. Apparently, she actually believed it.

Shoulda never been said in the first place.

Color me unimpressed.

Ivins is the mouth-breathing sow that has referred to her outright plagiarism of author Florence King as excessive attribution.

Just when you think that liberals have reached the bottom of the well of human stupidity, someone like Molly comes along as an example that there is no bottom.

But what about the 1,00000,00,0,00,00,,,,0000 killed in Afganistan by the corporate oil pipeline? What about that you krazy killer kapitalist jeebushawks?

Hey, didn't her husband die just a few months ago? Sometimes that really changes a person, especially if it's a spouse who's been a part of their life for decades. Maybe she's undergoing some upheaval and change in her thinking. Whatever it is, apologizing is always good discipline, and any increase to the stock of truth in the world is to be welcomed.

Okay, so she's retracted one stupid thing. By my accounts, she's 1-for-100,000 now.

Speaking of which, anyone know where she gets the "20,000 dead Iraqi civilians" number? I know as well as anyone the war has been hard on Iraqis, but *that* hard?

Erm dave, don't go there. That number in all liklihood is probably a lowball. Iraq is kind of one of those things where you will never get a legit #, but anything you do get is going to be a low % of what the true civilian casualties were.

On topic: Ivins is an idiot. She has a lot more apologizing to do.

OT: This is funny

Gov of Tokyo sued for insulting French

"That number in all liklihood is probably a lowball. "

fat kid,

The question still stands, though. You may be right, e.g. say the civilian body count is set at 2000 and it might really be 4000, but I want to know where the numbers are coming from. Do you have a source?

Log Cabin

Ivins is the mouth-breathing sow

Amen! Add to that a well known active-alcoholic. Perhaps she was drunk again when she wrote her lies, or perhaps she is in treatment for the disease of Liberalism, for in the past she never would've retracted her lies. As a spoiled country-club-rich-girl from Houston, she put on this "good 'ol gal" act that east coast Liberals just ate up! On billboards the motto of gossip column was "Molly Ivans said what?" Cheap, very cheap.

She is still taking the total number of civilian deaths and blaming the USA - if Zarqawi's thugs murder 1,000 more Iraqi kids getting candy from US troops then she and her ilk count those against the USA.
She is a lying sow.

Fat Kid--

Iraq Body Count won't come up at work for me (hmmm. . . Pentagon banning? ;-), but I found this Beeb article from June that says that IBC lists 22-25,000 dead since the beginning of the war. My bet is that Ivins got the number there.

For lack of a better source I use IBC myself, so I'll let Ivins have this one.

Congrats, she's 2-out-of-100,000 now.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Right Wing News recently summarized estimates of civilian casualties resulting from the war (in the article debunking the 8 myths of the Iraq War).

http://www.rightwingnews.com/special/xyz.php

Of course, saying the "we" killed these civilians is overstating the case.

Have suffered for decades reading Molly - can't stand the woman or her opinions. Her folksiness is a put on, an act she has refined for lo these many years.

But she did give up a pretty good apology (her motivations for saying it in the first place are just "I hate Bush). I've seen her apologize before, several times (when she gets busted, but it's better than idiots like Krugman that just ignore it when they're busted). So I'll grudgingly give her that.

Funny - I wonder if it bugs the shit out of her that she has a lot to do with Bush becoming President. Back when nobody back east ever heard of the guy, the establishment reporters combed Texas for a lib who knew something about George. They all landed on her, dear God the airtime she got on Nightline, Larry King... sheesh.

Her act was so outrageous she turned off a lot of people who leaned toward Gore.

If I ever (have) get to meet her, I'm thanking her for the great job she did helping Bush win.

"For lack of a better source I use IBC myself, so I'll let Ivins have this one."

Dave,

Did you read how they get their numbers?
"Casualty figures are derived solely from a comprehensive survey of online media reports" - Have you ever noticed the type of casualty counts given by Al Jazeera, et al?
Did you know their statistics include crime? They rationalize this because the liberation caused a breakdown of law and order. I would suggest you put no credence in these numbers whatsoever.

We'll compared to the apology Durbin gave, and the fact that she didn't use the outrageously false estimation of 1,000 Iraqi casualties most lefties use on a daily basis , she went up a notch in my book. She's at Notch 1.

Ace- Aren't you missing the real point though? Aren't the civilians killed in collateral damage as we try to bring freedom to Iraqis qualitatively different from those political prisoners raped, tortured, and & intentionally massacred by their dictator?

And note in her story she was "watching for a couple months" to see when the number hit 20,000. To her, there is no moral distinction.

You cannot possibly agree with that.

See http://cavalrycharge.blogspot.com/2005/07/correction-watch_13.html

I think we're setting the bar way too high for Molly. If an Ivans column is mostly coherent and has an understandable point I give her an A. And she had one of those about eight months ago.

Brew Fan-- Oh, I take it with a whole heap of salt, but show me a better site with some form of verifiable methodology. I'm serious, I'd love to hear anyone with solid numbers here.

TO'D-- I wouldn't use the word "qualitatively" here, without some qualifiers of our own. Remember, dead is dead is dead, so if you're simply measuring a value-neutral "Misery Index," 20,000 dead is worse than no dead at all.

Of course, Saddam's Iraq wasn't the idyllic paradise Michael Moore would have us to believe, so 20,000 dead during the war is certainly better than, say, 100,000 dead during the same time.

Also, regardless of whether those 20,000 dead Iraqi civilians include specious categories of accounting (e.g. victims of crime), they definitely include civilians killed in terrorists attacks, i.e. civilians NOT killed by the Coalition.

Then again, playing this numbers game inevitably supports the Michael Moore argument: no matter who killed innocent Iraqi civilians, were it not for the United States invasion and occupation, the terrorists would not be attacking, and thus those thousands of civilians would never have been caught in the cross-fire.

Unfortunately, we all can understand how that can't be said given the comparative bloody savagery of Saddam's regime.

In the end, however, I am still troubled by pointing to "20,000 dead" as a form of progress. My logical mind certainly agrees that number is better than what came before, and what would almost certainly have continued to come had we not overthrown Saddam.

Yet, I'm not happy about it. I wish nobody was being killed here.

Oh well. Wars kill people. Bad guys know that, good guys might as well know that too.

-- Dave at Garfield Ridge

I'm glad you take that number with a grain of salt, Dave.

I don't care if I ever see a civilian body count number, accurate or not. Its irrelavant. I know that sounds cold but its a fact. My heart goes out to any victim of violence and their loved ones but the fact that there will be such victims cannot change our determination in this war on terror. We have a professional military that we can call upon to wage this war in a manner that makes civilian casualties as low as possible and I believe they have upheld that trust so far. And because I believe that I view civilian body count numbers as good for anti-war propaganda only.

We here in Texas are use to her insane rantings (as I said in my blog) but here again is this liberal insistance on blaming so much of the civilian deaths on our soldiers instead of the terrorists who bomb children (and their own people) ON PURPOSE!!! Geeze!!

I get really sick of leftists blaming us for al-Qaeda's crimes. But anyhow, despite the cynical and dishonest exploitation of dead Iraqis to promote leftist causes, it's important that we who supported this war always remember that a lot of decent Iraqis have paid a terrible price for our safety and their eventual freedom.

Iraqis, for the most part, are our friends and allies, and they are in al-Qaeda's crosshairs to an extent that I doubt even New Yorkers and Londoners can fully appreciate.

Most Iraqis agree that it was worth it. But that doesn't mean it was easy. 9/11 was just a drop in the bucket compared to what they've been through.

TO'D - Excellent question and worth repeating -

"Aren't the civilians killed in collateral damage as we try to bring freedom to Iraqis qualitatively different from those political prisoners raped, tortured, and & intentionally massacred by their dictator?"

The answer is of course Yes they are dramatically different - when Saddam was in power, everyone in Iraq was at risk of being tortured and murdered in as gruesome a manner as Saddam could devise, and there was no end in sight. (If he died one of his even more gruesome sons would have taken over.)

Now large areas of Iraq are secure, and there is a strong chance (provided the msm quislings and the chicken-s*** dems don't persuade us to run away) of a successful end to the violence of the baathist remnants and for democracy and freedom for all of Iraq going forward.

last post was mine.