Top Ten Merriam-Webster word searches of 2004:
1. blog
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration
As the story points out, eight of the words are related to news events.
I’m not surprised by most of the words on the list. But hurricane? People haven’t figured those out yet?
I guess since John Ashcroft has achieved the objective of securing the homeland, there isn’t much left to do at DHS.
$1.3334/Euro.
“There was a concern that the U.S. will let the dollar slide because of the trade deficit, so I asked President Bush for his opinion. His answer was the U.S. is committed to a strong dollar.”
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
November 22, 2004
Juan Cole has an interesting post examining differences that liberals and conservatives see in the use of military force. But here he makes a good point on the body count mentality of some in the Pentagon:
The US military seems strangely unaware of the realities of insurgencies. It seems to think there are a limited number of “bad guys,” who can all be killed or captured. The possibility that virtually all able-bodied men in Fallujah supported the insurgency, and that many are weekend warriors, does not seem to occur to them. In fact, as Mao noted, guerrillas swim in a sea of supportive civilians. The US military slides suggest that now that the bad guys have been taken care of, the civilians can be won over. That this outcome is highly unlikely does not seem to occur to them.
As long as we’re simply killing bad guys, we’re never going to turn this thing around in Iraq; more will just keep popping up. The only thing that’s going to stop this is if we get the Iraqi civilian population to turn against the insurgency. And, unfortunately, we haven’t seen a great deal of progress on that front during the past six months.
It’s the last day of November. Unfortunately, at least 133 U.S. troops serving in Iraq will never get to flip their calendars from November to December, because they’re now dead. When it’s all said and done, November might be the the most deadly month for US forces in Iraq.
“I think it [Iraq] has been a remarkable success story to date, when you look at what has been accomplished overall. I think the President deserves great credit for it.”
Vice President Dick Cheney
October 25, 2004
I see that the folks at the White House see a need to publicize the Thanksgiving telephone calls our commander-in-chief made to members of the Armed Forces
Okay, but why stop there? Wouldn’t it be interesting if the White House published a list of all President Bush’s phone calls? Everyday?
Now that would be informative.
