iraq: 100,000 kidnappers

* jay rosen: "McClellan’s specialty was non-communication; what’s remarkable about him as a choice for press secretary is that he had no special talent for explaining Bush’s policies to the world. In fact, he usually made things less clear by talking about them. We have to assume that this is the way the President wanted it; and if we do assume that it forces us to ask: why use a bad explainer and a rotten communicator as your spokesman before the entire world? Isn’t that just dumb— and bad politics? Wouldn’t it be suicidal in a media-driven age with its 24-hour news cycle?"

* juancole:

"A report prepared by 125 NGOs and released in Karbala says that 19,548 persons have been kidnapped in Iraq since the beginning of 2006, and 15,462 persons have been wounded. The article reports that "The 19,548 people kidnapped includes 4,959 women and 2,350 children . . ."

On the one hand, these numbers strike me as unrealistically high. I presume they come from the first three months of the year. The article does not say where the statistics come from, though I presume they are from the Iraqi police. On the other hand, the precision of the numbers suggests that there are real statistics behind the report, not just wild guesses. What takes me aback is that I would figure 20,000 kidnap victims would require on the order of 100,000 kidnappers to pull the operations off. That would make kidnapping one of Iraq's major industries."

* juancole:

"Little known fact department: Maintenance and repair of US military vehicles in Iraq is far more expensive than replacing the vehicles blown up by the guerrillas. Whatcha wanna bet the spare parts are very expensive, on purpose? The military industrial complex has families to feed, too."

* im switching my email address to gmail. LukeryLand@ - please update accordingly.