The Logic of Choosing Life

Cheat Seeking Missiles sums up Terri Schiavo's case pretty well:

The logic of this case is so simple, and so defies the howls of the Left, that it's a wonder they're letting themselves be cast as ghouls of death. It all comes down to this:

If Terri is in as bad a shape as her husband says she is, she doesn't know and wouldn't care whether she is alive or not, so why not let her parents care for her if they want to?

And if she is not in as bad a shape as her husband says she is, why in the world would you kill her instead of transferring responsibility for her care to people who love her and will support her?

Good question. Here's another: Why are liberals so determined to have this woman killed?

More Upbeat News From Iraq

A friend passes on this list of things we probably didn't know about Iraq gleaned, it says here, from the Department of Defense website:

Forty seven countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq.

The Iraqi government employs 1.2 million Iraqi people.

Thirty one hundred schools have been renovated, 364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 schools are now under construction and 38 new schools have been built in Iraq.

Iraq's higher educational structure consists of 20 Universities, 46 Institutes or colleges and 4 research centers.

Twenty five Iraq students departed for the United States in January 2004 for the re-established Fulbright program.

The Iraqi Navy is operational. They have five 100-foot patrol craft, 34 smaller vessels and a naval infantry regiment.

Iraq's Air Force consists of three operation squadrons, 9 reconnaissance and 3 US C-130 transport aircraft which operate day and night, and will soon add 16 UH-1 helicopters and 4 bell jet rangers.

Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Commando Battalion.

The Iraqi Police Service has over 55,000 fully trained and equipped police officers.

There are 5 Police Academies in Iraq that produce over 3500 new officers each 8 weeks.

There are more than 1100 building projects going on in Iraq. They include 364 schools, 67 public clinics, 15 hospitals, 83 railroad stations, 22 oil facilities, 93 water facilities and 69 electrical facilities.

Ninety six percent of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have received the first 2 series of polio vaccinations.

Over 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled in primary school by mid October.

There are 1,192,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq and phone use has gone up 158%.

Iraq has an independent media that consist of 75 radio stations, 180 newspapers and 10 television stations.

The Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004.

Two candidates in the Iraqi presidential election had a recent televised debate recently.

If this is the first you've heard about these achievements you might ask your local MSM news outlet why they so assiduously publicize every car bombing in Iraq but never seem to get around to letting us know this sort of information.

Interpreting Media Casualty Reports

Instapundit links us to a note from Arthur Chrenkoff about how to read the casualty reports coming out of Iraq. It turns out that we must read beyond the headline. If we do we learn that over half of the reported casualties are insurgents. Chrenkoff writes:

Aren't you glad that you read more than the headline

"45 killed in insurgent attacks" or indeed the opening paragraph

"At least 45 people have been killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq as Washington defended its decision to go to war on the second anniversary of the US-led invasion." of this Agence France-Presse story. Because when you get to the second paragraph, you read:

"Twenty-four Iraqi insurgents were killed and six coalition soldiers wounded in a firefight in a Baghdad suburb overnight, the US military said."

That is, more than half of the people killed in insurgent attacks were the insurgents themselves. Actually, when you read on, you discover that another five insurgents died in two separate attacks, which means that the number is really 29 out of 45.

It's tragic that 15 Iraqis and one American have also died yesterday, but there is a very important implication flowing from all this: terrorism and insurgency rely for their effectiveness and survival on the ability to inflict mass casualties, preferably in a spectacular fashion, while sustaining minimal losses themselves. The arithmetic in Iraq, and everywhere else, is simple: there are hell of a lot more ordinary Iraqis (including Iraqi security forces) out there than there are terrorists. Hence, terrorists cannot afford to be dying at the same, or greater, rate than their target population.

But they are, of course, which is why the insurgency may well be dying.