From The Onion:

Thousands More Dead In Continuing Iraq Victory

America marks three and a half years of winning in Iraq, and nearly 3,000 victory deaths
December 18, 2006 | Issue 42•51

Statistics released by the Department Of Defense estimated that 2,937 U.S. troops and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the ongoing American military victory in Iraq.

General George Casey, Jr. lauds “another plainly measurable step” in America’s victory.

“Victory deaths are at a higher level than we had anticipated, yes,” Gen. George Casey, Jr. said at a press conference shortly after the figures were released.

One of my dearest friends is a Kurdish-American Iraqi immigrant who lost 40 relatives to Saddam Hussein‘s genocidal campaign against the Kurds, the Anfal. She was condemned by Hussein’s government for her work with foreign NGOs, and eventually evacuated to America from Iraq as a political refugee in the mid-90s. Anyway, we were talking yesterday about our New Year’s Eve plans, and also the impending Hussein execution, and she made some smart points I hadn’t heard elsewhere:

1) Hussein was being executed before being tried for all his crimes against the Iraqi people. Rather than a full measure of truth and reconciliation, Iraqis got just one short prosecution, followed by the death of their tormentor. And he was executed for crimes against the Shia, not what he did to the Kurds. Today, Washington Kurdish Institute president Najmaldin Karim makes the same point in The New York Times: “we have not had full justice. Saddam Hussein did not confront the full horror of his crimes.”

2) The timing of the execution, as best she understood the Iraqi thinking, was moved up because Eid ul-Adha — The Feast of the Sacrifice — started on Dec. 30, Saturday. The disruptions caused by holiday, as well as the moral obligations it imposes upon believers, might be expected to have some mitigating effect on Sunni reaction and possibly diminish social unrest and retaliations following the execution. Steve Benen, guest-blogging at The Washington Monthly, points to this Juan Cole op-ed in Salon, which presents a more worrisome picture of the timing’s impact:

The tribunal…had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam’s hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday — and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar.

The timing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a “sacrifice” for his nation, an explicit reference to Eid al-Adha. The tribunal had given the old secular nationalist the chance to use religious language to play on the sympathies of the whole Iraqi public.

3) The death penalty is “uncivilized.” What with the routine blood lust one hears from American commentators over the punishment of a man who did not kill their relatives, I thought her final point — an opinion apparently not shared by many Iraqis — showed a remarkable level of class and dignity. More importantly, she pointed out that in an honor-based society like Iraq, continued trials of Hussein that made him a figure of mockery and humiliation would have had more power in undermining support for him than would executing him rapidly. A hanged man can be a martyr, after all, but a weak, powerless old man with a funny beard who is on trial for years on end is just a sad, pathetic, emasculated social joke.

Where did John Edwards announce his presidential candidacy? Reading the blogs and opinion sites, it’s easy to get confused. Here’s what different people are saying:

Nancy Scola at MyDD: “the yard of Orelia Tyler’s house in the 9th Ward of New Orleans.”

My colleague Ezra Klein on his LA Weekly site: “the upper 9th Ward.”

My colleague Ben Adler at Tapped: “his choice of location. The Ninth Ward of New Orleans.”

Byron York at The Corner: “Edwards…will make his announcement tomorrow in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.”

Rich Lowry at Townhall.com: “John Edwards is a Man of the Poor. That is what announcing his presidential candidacy in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans was meant to say.”

And why did they report that? Because Edwards told them that’s where he would be announcing, just as he told the A.P.: “The former North Carolina senator plans to formally announce his candidacy Thursday from New Orleans’ 9th Ward, which was hard hit by Hurricane Katrina.” And because the first thing Edwards said during his announcement was: “Good morning. I’m here in New Orleans to — in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to announce that I’m a candidate for the presidency of the United States in the election in 2008.”

Yesterday, however, The New York Times reported:

Though Mr. Edwards’s central theme in the 2004 campaign was poverty, that was not the case on Thursday, as he made only a passing reference to the “two Americas,” his slogan two years ago. Instead of choosing to announce from the Lower Ninth Ward, the impoverished neighborhood that has become a symbol for the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, opted for middle-class East New Orleans, and an area of solid, single-story tan-brick homes that are salvageable, unlike the flimsy frame buildings in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Sounds like someone’s advance people need to do their homework a bit better.

UPDATE: Actually, Wikipedia says that East New Orleans is part of the Ninth Ward, it’s just not the Lower Ninth Ward, the neighborhood so famously devastated by the hurricane. So Edwards was technically accurate, even if he was not exactly where people think he was. The Ninth Ward is quite large and even has some wealthy neighborhoods.

UPDATE 2: The Ninth Ward apparently has three main neighborhoods: The Lower Ninth Ward, the Upper Ninth Ward, and Eastern New Orleans/New Orleans East. And New Orleans East was flooded, just like the Lower Ninth Ward. When I first read the Times reporter’s piece I thought he was making a knowledgable geographic point, but now I think he was just being persnickety.

Speaking of Canada geese, this fascinating history of the species and how they went native in America is well worth reading — a real case study in the law of unintended consequences:

As late as the 1950s, the giant Canada goose was thought to be extinct. In 1962, however, biologists confirmed that some individuals remained near Rochester, Minnesota. The discovery led to a concerted effort by many states to restore goose numbers (although less out of a motive to repair damaged biological communities than to establish a huntable population). Geese were rounded up during their annual molt and driven into pens as easily as domestic animals. The geese were then shipped, interstate and intrastate, to establish new breeding populations. Within 30 years the giant Canada goose went from near-extinction to abundance—even, according to some, overabundance….

“Residential” Canada geese do not migrate to Arctic breeding grounds, preferring instead to remain year-round in continental U.S. urban and suburban neighborhoods. Why migration patterns have been abandoned is not yet clear. Some populations may never have been strong migrants; others have lost their migratory urge. Geese apparently must be taught migratory routes by other geese. They remember their place of birth and tend to return there to breed and raise their own young. But many geese have been trapped and moved during the past 30 years, and trapped goslings were often separated from adults when relocated. This separation may have broken the migratory tradition. Many Canada geese also were kept in captive flocks to serve as live decoys, tethered along the waterways followed by migrating geese to entice the migrators into shotgun range in hunting season. When released from captivity, decoy geese may have had no knowledge of migratory routes and may have had no alternative but to settle in areas that were at least familiar to them.

Whatever initially prompted Canada geese to remain in one location year-round, the lush green lawns surrounding park ponds, residential subdivisions, corporate centers, and golf courses encouraged them to stay. Unlike species of waterfowl that eat aquatic vegetation or aquatic animals, Canada geese prefer to graze on land.

From the AFP:

An enormous ice shelf broke away from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic last year, researchers said, warning it could be another symptom of global warming.

The 66-square-kilometer (25.5-square-mile) ice island tore away from Ellesmere, a huge strip of land in the Canadian Arctic close to Greenland.

The break occurred in August 2005 and was so violent that it caused tremors that were detected by Canadian seismographs 250 kilometers (155 miles) away, but at the time no one was able to pinpoint what had happened.

The Canadian Ice Service contacted geographer Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, who reconstructed the chain of events by piecing together data from the seismic readings and satellite images provided by Canada and the United States.

“This loss is the biggest in 25 years, but it continues the loss that occurred within the last century,” Copland told AFP, saying 90 percent of the the ice cover had been lost since the area was discovered in 1906.

Still no real snow in Boston this winter, either. There was the start of a flurry earlier this month, but that only lasted half a day, and today I was able to go jogging without a jacket or gloves. Unreal. Meanwhile, the whole Northeast seems to be covered in a thin layer of Canada geese — Canada geese, not Canadian geese, is apparently the correct name — which have landed in great flocks on fields all over Massachusetts, Connecticut, and upstate New York, where they are peaceably grazing and flicking their glossy tails.

Even polar bears could go extinct at this rate:

The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world’s most recognizable animals out of existence.

The administration’s proposal — which was described by an Interior Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity — stems from the fact that rising temperatures in the Arctic are shrinking the sea ice that polar bears need for hunting. The official insisted on anonymity because the department will submit the proposal today for publication in the Federal Register, after which it will be subject to public comment for 90 days.

Identifying polar bears as threatened with extinction could have an enormous political and practical impact. As the world’s largest bear and as an object of children’s affection as well as Christmastime Coca-Cola commercials, the polar bear occupies an important place in the American psyche. Because scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide from power-plant and vehicle emissions is helping drive climate change worldwide, putting polar bears on the endangered species list raises the legal question of whether the government would be required to compel U.S. industries to curb their carbon dioxide output.

“We’ve reviewed all the available data that leads us to believe the sea ice the polar bear depends on has been receding,” said the Interior official, who added that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have concluded that polar bears could be endangered within 45 years. “Obviously, the sea ice is melting because the temperatures are warmer.”