Some commenters would have it that the war is going swell. What can I do to tell them it’s just not the case?

Insurgents hammered central Baghdad on Sunday with one of their most intense mortar and rocket barrages ever in the heart of the capital, heralding a day of violence that killed nearly 60 people nationwide as security appeared to spiral out of control.

At least 37 people were killed in Baghdad alone. Many of them died when a U.S. helicopter fired on a disabled U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle as Iraqis swarmed around it, cheering, throwing stones and waving the black and yellow sunburst banner of Iraq (news – web sites)’s most-feared terror organization.

The dead from the helicopter strike included Arab television reporter Mazen al-Tumeizi, who screamed, “I’m dying! I’m dying!” as a cameraman recorded the chaotic scene. An Iraqi cameraman working for the Reuters news agency and an Iraqi freelance photographer for Getty Images were wounded.

Maimed and lifeless bodies of young men and boys lay in the street as the stricken U.S. vehicle was engulfed in flames and thick black smoke.

Across the country, the death toll Sunday was at least 59, according to figures from the Health Ministry, the Multinational Force command and local authorities.

Nearly 200 people were wounded, more than half of them in Baghdad.

Strong detonations again shook the center of Baghdad after sunset Sunday. There were no reports of damage or casualties.

Maimed and lifeless bodies…. These are the people we went to liberate. These are the ones we were saving from Saddam,and they are willing to die trying to kill us. How can we win? And that’s a serious question. Has any occupier “won” a war under similar conditions, bringing the people around from wanting to kill them to appreciating them and cooperating with them? I really want to know, because that’s what we’ve got to do.

UPDATE: Another part of the story:

As the Americans withdrew, jubilant fighters and young boys swarmed around the burning vehicle. Several young men placed a black banner of al-Qaeda-backed Tawhid and Jihad, led by terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in the barrel of the Bradley’s main gun. A US Apache attack helicopter swooped down and opened fire around the Bradley. Witnesses said several people, including a journalist for an Arab TV station, were killed.

That’s important. Aside from proving how great we’re doing winning hearts and minds, it also points to the real danger here — we are driving Iraqis into the arms of Al Qaeda. This is the first time I’ve seen such a dramatic and incontestable example. This is really, really scary.

So how are we doing? Are we winning?

This is quite cool. Ben Condit, an American in Hong Kong, is doing what he can to help the cause with his “Kerry Cards,” which I’m counting on all visitors to this site to purchase and distribute to everyone you know. You really have to see them. Here’s what Ben says he wants them to accomplish:

Well, the cards are viral in that they can spread exponentially through US voters just like an epidemic – when people hand out cards, it prompts people to sign up for their own cards, who hand them out and prompt more people to sign up, and so on. The real power is the exponential spread – if each set prompts just two people to sign up for cards, a small of chain of 28 links can get a Kerry-card and the pro-Kerry message into the hands of every single US voter – that’s over 200 million! I got the idea for Kerry-cards whilst reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘The Tipping Point’, which is all about engineering social epidemics using the power of exponential spread like this. Hopefully my cards will be contagious enough to help ‘infect’ my fellow Americans with the message that we need Kerry as president.

Go to Ben’s site to see the cards, and then order some. And if any HK expats are reading this, maybe you can order a set for my friend Conrad. Maybe they’ll help him to see the light.

This write-up of George Butler’s new film, Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, should serve as a powerful tonic to anyone infected with the propaganda of the Smear Boat Liars. The part that moved me the most:

Mr. Butler, best known for “Pumping Iron,” the 1977 documentary that first turned Arnold Schwarzenegger into a national commodity, can be a powerful storyteller. And nowhere more so than when he gets to the scene where Mr. Kerry and his buddies protest the war by throwing medals and ribbons over a fence onto the Capitol steps. This incident has been stigmatized as an ugly un-American activity by the Kerry detractors. But the scene plays quite differently when you see it here, not as a grainy snapshot but as an extended cinematic drama, pieced together by Mr. Butler from his own photos and the large and heretofore scattered film record made by the many news organizations present that day.

What stares you in the face is the anguish and grief of men who put their lives in the line of fire for a government that undertook a pointless war, mismanaged it, kept it going out of hubris and then abandoned it. These veterans do not lightheartedly toss away the symbols of their sacrifice in Vietnam; they struggle with tears and violently conflicted emotions as they do so. They are battered men often wearing the ragtag remnants of their uniforms. Their eyes are haunted. They are willing to engage in self-annihilation, eradicating the record of their own heroism in battle, if that’s what it takes to prevent their brothers from continuing to die in a doomed mission. Watch this and try not to weep.

Set against this real-life backdrop of the time, Mr. Kerry’s famous line before J. W. Fulbright, Jacob Javits and the rest of that Senate committee regains its patriotic force: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” And as Todd Gitlin documents in his history, “The Sixties,” the young Kerry’s antiwar stance was hardly anomalous among his fellow Vietnam warriors by then, those still serving included. By that late point in the war — three years after Tet, L.B.J.’s abdication and Walter Cronkite’s public declaration that we were “mired in stalemate” — there were seven desertions and 17 AWOL incidents for every 100 American soldiers. There were more than 250 antiwar newspapers within the armed forces alone. And still another 13,000 Americans were yet to die for the mistake.

Although Rich doesn’t say it in so many words, his article underscores the shallowness of the attacks against Kerry, which would have you see him as a ruthless back-stabber, betraying his fellow soldiers to bask in the spotlight of national attention and boost a political career. This is simply untrue. Reading the warbloggers, one gets the impression that the ribbon/medal-throwing was an act of glee, and of extreme selfishness — and an act of treason. Maybe this film, by displaying what actually happened, as opposed to Tom Maguire’s and Hugh Hewitt’s fantastical iterations thereof, will open the eyes of a few voters still willing to think for themselves.

I can’t urge you strongly enough to check out the article. It will grab you with its opening lines, and you’ll want to read very word.

This sure sounds serious– maybe even nuclear.

A large explosion occurred in the northern part of North Korea (news – web sites), sending a huge mushroom cloud into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, a South Korean news agency reported Sunday.

The South Korean government said it was trying to confirm the report.

The Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul, said the explosion happened at 11 a.m. local time Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. The blast in Kim Hyong Jik county left a crater big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said.

“We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 2.2 miles to 2.5 miles in diameter was monitored during the explosion,” the source said. Yonhap described the source as “reliable.”

Thursday was the anniversary of the 1948 foundation of the communist regime. Leader Kim Jong Il uses the occasion to stage performances and other events to bolster loyalty among the impoverished North Korean population.

Experts have speculated that North Korea might use a major anniversary to conduct a nuclear-related test, though there was no immediate indication that the reported explosion on Thursday was linked to Pyongyang’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Lots of questions, and no answers at the moment.

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush, right, take part in a moment of silence, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2004, on the South Lawn of the White House to mark the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Via Dr. Black.

A lengthy front-page article in today’s NY Times delves into the crisis of China’s polluted waters and the death they rain on the Chinese people via cancer and a host of miseries.

Wang Lincheng began his accounting at the brick hut of a farmer. Dead of cancer, he said flatly, his dress shoes sinking in the mud. Dead of cancer, he repeated, glancing at another vacant house.

Mr. Wang, head of the Communist Party in this village, ignored a June rain and trudged past mud-brick houses, ticking off other deaths, other empty homes. He did not seem to notice a small cornfield where someone had dug a burial mound of fresh red dirt.

Finally, he stopped at the door of a sickened young mother. Her home was beside a stream turned greenish-black from dumping by nearby factories – polluted water that had contaminated drinking wells. Cancer had been rare when the stream was clear, but last year cancer accounted for 13 of the 17 deaths in the village.

“All the water we drink around here is polluted,” Mr. Wang said. “You can taste it. It’s acrid and bitter. Now the victims are starting to come out, people dying of cancer and tumors and unusual causes.”

The stream in Huangmengying is one tiny canal in the Huai River basin, a vast system that has become a grossly polluted waste outlet for thousands of factories in central China. There are 150 million people in the Huai basin, many of them poor farmers now threatened by water too toxic to touch, much less drink.

Pollution is pervasive in China, as anyone who has visited the smog-choked cities can attest. On the World Bank’s list of 20 cities with the worst air, 16 are Chinese. But leaders are now starting to clean up major cities, partly because urbanites with rising incomes are demanding better air and water. In Beijing and Shanghai, officials are forcing out the dirtiest polluters to prepare for the 2008 Olympics.

By contrast, the countryside, home to two-thirds of China’s population, is increasingly becoming a dumping ground. Local officials, desperate to generate jobs and tax revenues, protect factories that have polluted for years. Refineries and smelters forced out of cities have moved to rural areas. So have some foreign companies, to escape regulation at home.

Of all China’s many insurmountable challenges, pollution may be at the very top of the list. The good Chairman Mao helped the crisis blossom back when he made it a stated goal to defy nature and set up smokestack factories in the heart of neighborhoods. Looking back at the CCP’s history, it reads like a primer for how to rape and ruin the environment. (Jasper Becker’s The Chinese is a good source for horror stories on this topic.)

This may be the scariest piece I’ve read yet on how pollution is killing the Chinese people. The stories of black rivers and uncontrolled dumping of millions of tons of toxic chemicals every day into China’s waterways can only make the reader feel helpless — because it appears absolutely nothing can be done to stop it, let alone reverse it. Too many local cadre officials benefit from the chemical companies and tanneries that foul the water. Regulations and controls eat into profits. So it’s far simpler to slip an official a bribe and continue the destruction.

The scariest aspect of this story is the sheer selfishness and staggering carelessness of the perpetrators. We’d like to think that people consider the lives of their children and their countrymen instead of focusing only on the immediate profit. That’s not the case here. It’s as though they just don’t give a damn, as long as they’re going to make some extra yuan.

And it’s not only the Chinese. A lot of foreign companies, as the article points out, set up their factories in China precisely because they can avoid the annoying rules and regulations of the West. Apparently it’s okay to mutilate the environment, if the victims are yellow or brown people. (Anyone remember Bhopal?)

The article interviews the victims of this carelessness. Their stories are infuriating, heartbreaking, maddening — because there doen’t seem to be any viable solution. It’s a vicious circle, fueled by lawlessness, corruption, greed and a fuck-you attitude that is difficult to comprehend.

I just watched Bill Moyers’ PBS special on 911, and it brought back a wealth of memories, things that somehow have evaporated from our collective consciences — Richard’s Clarke’s very specific warning about Osama Bin Laden’s intent to attack America, John Ashcroft seeking to get funds for anti-terrorism reduced days before 911, Condi Rice’s grotesque evasions before the 911 commission, bush clearing brush and sawing wood during his 23-day vacation as 911 loomed and as the CIA was being flooded with reports of terror cells about to wreak massive destruction on American soil. If you’re in China, I don’t know if you can see it, but it’s amazing.

How did we forget all this? How did we let ourselves be deluded into believing the least qualified, most irresponsible cipher on the planet is the only man who can “keep us safe”? Seeing these video clips and watching the frightening timeline drove it home so vividly. When, in early 2001, Clarke warned that the attack on the USS Cole was an Al Qaeda action and that more were to follow, the bush people actually told him, almost verbatim, “That happened on Clinton’s watch — it’s not our concern.” And what did Clarke get for his “hair-on-fire” warnings to Condi and the president? He was demoted, and barred from meetings on terrorism. meetings at which it was agreed there were no action items to be taken on terrorism. And bush is the man who will keep us all safe. He is the wartime president whom we must elect or face annihilation. A coke-snorter, draft-dodger, and failure in everything he ever attempted, who picked up a bullhorn and gave a good speech and is thus elevated to near Messiahnic status while he drags us ever deeper into a needless war that bleeds the treasury and slits the throats of our young servicepeople who believe they are dying for something better, something noble.

And why shouldn’t we throw the scoundrel out of office on his ass? What a stupid question! It’s because his opponent was in Cambodia in January, when he said decades ago that he was there in December. Obviously, the decorated veteran and hero isn’t fit to serve. It’s so strange, so twisted, a fiction writer couldn’t ever conceive of it. And this is what I came home to. This is America. And it just may continue, like a long-term sickness, for yet another four years. The very thought makes me nauseous.

Sorry for the venting, but after a hard day at work and a deluge of bad news on Iraq, the elections and the economy, I don’t know what else to do.

Update: Further proof for the skeptical.

Check out the post accompanying this photo Satire at its most vicious.

Via Wonkette.

UPDATE: This post seems to have offended one of my long-time blog buddies. I’m sorry about that, but sometimes shock effect is the best way to make a point. Everyone knows I take no pleasure in the deaths of our soldiers. I posted this picture because it articulated my sense of sorrow and dread, that this war was becoming a meat grinder with an unending appetite. I have no regrets for posting it.

There’s a lot of buzz going around at the moment that they may be fakes, and some of the points I’m hearing are damned good. Go here for an explanation, and for a fascinating theory of how this may well be just another good old-fashined piece of Karl Rove mischief-making. (If you saw the movie Bush’s Brain, you’ll know that this is not nearly as far-fetched as it seems — not by a long shot.)

Sometime all it takes is a touch of wit and satire to drive home a point that so many us have been trying breathlessly to articulate for months, even years. And when it’s done with wit, satire and just a dash of genius, the result can be absolutely devastating. Go to this most unlikely source to see what I mean. (And the post right under that is pretty ingenious, too.) A masterpiece. I might as well hang up the mitts now.