Thinking back to October, many of us will remember the Lancet Study.  It concluded that around 600,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war (although the number could be as low as 300,000 or as high as 900,000).

It was a highly charged time in the run up to the elections and no surprise the political damage control swung in to action quickly.  Bush claimed "I don't consider it a credible report", Tony Blair's spokesman said "it used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole."

Nothing to see here, move along.  As the media did.

In this country at least.

Fortunately the BBC still has some journalists worth their salt.  They filed a British Freedom of Information Request on 28 November 2006 to uncover any internal discussions that might have been had within the British goverment about the matter.  The information was released on 14 March 2007 and is reported here.

But discussion has already begun over what a congress led by Pelosi might do. Specifically, what it might do about impeaching the cretins somehow in charge of our Government. Of course, Pelosi herself has said impeachment's off the table. This of course provoked more than a little reaction here, countered by Gilliard here.

It's a tricky one. Personally I can't think of anything I'd like more (or the country needs more) than impeachment. But I know how our friends in the MSM will spin it: vindictive democrats out for payback. Hell, that narrative's practically already started.

So let me make a suggestion...

It'll be interesting finding out.  I hope we actually do.

But one thought occurs to me.

As various commenters have noted, the story claims "it's the largest database ever assembled in the world".  Yet if it were only storing numbers called, it seems difficult to imagine that it could beat the petabyte (ish) size of the largest particle accelerator databases anyone knows about.

So what's being stored?

Well.

We know that cellphones are included.

We know that cellphone companies, of course, know which of their towers (or which 'cell') each call is being placed from.

Sample lyrics:

Five days in this motherfucking attic
I can't use the cellphone I keep getting static
Dying 'cause they lying instead of telling us the truth (...)
Screwed 'cause they say they're coming back for us, too
but that was three days ago and I don't see no rescue
I ain't sayin' he's a gold digger
but he ain't messin' with no broke niggas
George Bush don't like black people
George Bush don't like black people

Get the MP3 here:  here

Thanks to boingboing for pointing me in the right direction.

The MP3 is from this site, if you want to check out the other songs available.

The day started badly with Gibson's 'My Word' piece in which he snidely suggested that Paris should have got the Olympic games so they could have shown us what a good job they'd have done on coping with the terrorist threat.  Almost as if he was wishing an attack on them.

This has been discussed already today here.  I imagine I'm not the only person (British or otherwise) to have written an outraged email to Fox.

But what staggers me is the new filth spewing from the right wing noise machine.

All went well until about 8.00, when people started showing up from a different precinct.  They'd received calls over the weekend telling them to come to ours.  Clearly non-legitimate calls, but a lot of people had obeyed the information.  I'd heard about this happening in Michigan, but looks like it's standard swing-state practice.

Anyway, the lawyers got all over it, and a bunch of drivers were delegated to shuttle people back to where they should be.  And it seems at least some of the people still have the message on their answerphone.

For now, let's keep GOTVing.

Ok.  The official line is this

But that's not the whole story.

More below, including pictures.

Now, I can't help but think this is flawed logic.

Dear Limey assholes

Last week G2 launched Operation Clark County to help readers have a say in
the American election by writing to undecided voters in the crucial state of
Ohio. In the first three days, more than 11,000 people requested addresses.
Here is some of the reaction to the project that we received from the US

Monday October 18, 2004
The Guardian