If we’re to have an intelligent and informed discussion about U.S. options in Iraq, House Speaker (D-Cal.) will need to speak more precise English.“There is complete chaos now,” she replied to CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” when he tried to ask if she were worried about what might happen to Iraq if U.S. troops started moving out in four to six months, as she wants.

The point here isn’t so much her redundancy—the definition of chaos is “complete disorder,” so “chaos” should suffice. It’s like newscasters who are in the habit of saying they are bringing you the “very latest” news when putting “very” in front of latest, doesn’t make it any more recent. It’s either the latest or not. My point is larger: the habit of war opponents to engage in such hyperbole, if not distortions.

Iraq is far from chaos. If Iraq were in chaos, there would be anarchy. No one would have electricity or water. There would be no government. No one would be safe. Everyone would be shooting at everyone else.

The fact is—dare I say—as wars go, this has been tame compared with other wars. I risk causing great rhetoric damage to my argument to make such an assertion, because it automatically sends tongues clucking about my “insensitivity” to the numbers of Americans killed. But the insensitivity is the anti-war critics when they attempt to compare the 3,000 American GIs killed in Iraq to almost 300,000 who died in World War II, or even the 47,000 who died in Vietnam and nearly 34,000 in the Korean War.

Some 30,000 to 60,000 civilians have died in Iraq, which is no small number, except when compared with the upwards of 38 million civilians who died in World War II. (Here I’m not including the ridiculous estimate of 600,000 civilian Iraqi deaths made in a horribly flawed study by researchers from Johns Hopkins.)

This is not to diminish the importance of any life; its value is not set by the number of people who die with you. But to return to my point: Nancy Pelosi and others like her do honest dialogue no favor by engaging in such—well, to use a word they like to apply to President Bush—lies.

Take Bush ubercritic Al Franken, author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Some friends recently gifted me with his latest rant, The Truth, which I opened at random to check his truthfulness. I landed on Page 278, which reads: “Testifying before Congress, on April 29, 2005, [then deputy secretary of defense] Paul Wolfowitz was asked how many Americans had been killed in Iraq. Wolfowitz replied: ‘It’s approximately 500, of which—I can get the exact numbers—approximately 350 are combat deaths.’”

Franken continued: “The actual number at the time was 722, of which 521 were killed in combat. He was off by a third, and not surprising at the low end.”

Wrong, Al.

Since he didn’t cite his source, I turned to the (usually) liberal Brookings Institution, which regularly publishes the “Iraq Index: Tracking Reconstruction and Security
in Post-Saddam Iraq.” The first index published in June, after Wolfowitz’ appearance, showed that 596 fatalities of all kinds were recorded at the end of April, of which 421 were combat deaths. Since some of these fatalities occurred in the six days after Wolfowitz’ appearance and that April was the second most fatal month for American GIs (131), one is safe to assume that Franken’s numbers should have been lower, much lower.

In other words, Franken exaggerated the number of deaths by 128, or 100 combat deaths. Said Franken, in trying to understand Wolfowitz’ “mistake,” “As people who listen to my show know, I have thought and thought about that moment. And the only explanation I can come up with is that [Wolfowitz] does not care.”

And I have thought and thought about why Franken would get the figure so wrong, and I can come up with a few: He didn’t have access to accurate numbers. Or, more likely, he doesn’t care about the truth, he’s making up numbers, or he’s so blinded by his ideology or hatred of Bush that facts meaning nothing.

Keep in mind: the first time I opened his book at random, I found this (if I were Franken, I’d call it a) lie. How much more deception is there in a book purporting to be “The Truth?”

Franken and Pelosi are not alone in this. Every day, you can pick up a newspaper or watch a newscast and see the situation in Iraq described in overwrought terms, terms that are predicated on doom and gloom assumptions. I’m not at all asserting that things are just ducky in Iraq, but you have to wonder how bad they really are when such phrases as “utter chaos” are used to describe Iraq without challenge by Schieffer and other news people.

We are about to enter a new phase of the Iraq debate, in which both sides will cast it in terms of one side “winning” or “losing” the rhetorical face-off. Pelosi says she wants to enter this debate in the spirit of “partnership, not partisanship.” Why does one get the feeling that this is not “The Truth.”

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