Crosses of Lafayette: Gold Star Moms and Vandalism

Photo by John Eaton

This photo is an event honoring Gold Star Mothers at the Crosses of Lafayette on Sunday, September 23, 2007.

Later that night vandals struck the memorial. This from Tuesday's Contra Costa Times:

Vandals attacked the memorial crosses in Lafayette on Sunday night or Monday morning, leaving pieces of broken, jagged wood lying haphazardly at the bases of those left standing.

Of the 3,623 crosses lining the hillside as a memorial for American troops killed in Iraq, between 150 and 300 of the crosses have been knocked down or destroyed, said Chris Donton, a site organizer.

Calling General Petreus

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Here are the numbers from the Department of Defense on Iraq Casualties. Do they look way down to you?

If you are interested they are part of report on Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq. Click the PDF titled September 2007.

Crosses of Lafayette

Photo by John Eaton

The sign at the Crosses of Lafayette memorial was changed briefly from the number of US Troops killed in Iraq to the number of Iraqis who have died during Bush's distastrous misadventure.

The sign simply said: 800,000

Job Growth? Ouch!

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The Economic Policy Institute reports that:

In an unexpectedly and extremely weak employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation's payrolls shrunk last month, the first monthly decline since August 2003. Prior months' job gains were revised down by 81,000, leading to an average monthly gain of just 44,000 over the past three months. Such a low monthly rate of job growth provides the first solid evidence that economic turmoil in financial markets has found its way into the job market.

Troop Deaths Greater in Each Month of 2007

Stolen from Angry Bear

Over at Angry Bear Frank de Libero has posted a much better graph than mine. He also provided this further analysis:

But this is just part of a pattern of communicating, where true facts are presented within a limited context, so that the resulting asymmetry of information creates a false impression. Most of us don't know that Iraq temperatures reach 120 degrees in July so that physical activity like combat is down. On the other hand, if an official announced that lowland US snow fall in July was the lowest it's been all year -- duh. The difference is that here in the US we all know about July snow fall, so there's no asymmetry.

I would add that the Bush Administration also tried to roll out numbers based on "combat deaths" as opposed to "troop deaths" in order to exclude the deaths from two helicopter crashes. In this way, the claim could be made that "combat deaths" in August were lower than in July of 2007.

Check out Madeleine Albright in today's WaPo on How To Change Iraq:

A cynic might suggest that the military's real mission is to enable President Bush to continue denying that his invasion has evolved into disaster.