Biggest Hassle -- High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and "battlefield" tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no effect on their preconceived notions of what's going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they've been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.
Biggest Outrage -- Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest Offender: Bill O'Reilly.
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More like this
The biggest limitation of the Lancet study is the small sample size. We can be reasonably confident that deaths have increased in Iraq since the invasion, but the 100,000 estimate is a very rough one.
In just eight years, the incidence of congenital birth defects in Iraq's Al Basrah Maternity Hospital increased 17-fold, a new study reports.
I missed this when it first came out, but Carl Bialik has written excellent summary of the issues in the Wall Street Journal.
Daniel Davies summarizes what is wrong with David Kane's criticism: