Paul Waldman wonders why, if McCain is so knowledgeable about terrorism, his actual position is so divorced from the facts on the ground:
Given the propaganda value of the war and the way al-Qaeda has become a franchise operation, it isn't surprising that the last few years have seen a huge increase in terrorist attacks.
There was a spike in 2001 because of the September 11 attacks, but in 2002 and 2003 the numbers were only slightly higher than they had been in the years before. Then the number of people killed by terrorists skyrocketed, to 1,907 in 2004; 6,317 in 2005; 6,572 in 2006; and 9,085 in 2007. And these numbers don't include those killed in acts of terrorism within Iraq itself. (Historical data from the State Department may be found here.)
If Bush and McCain are aware of this trend, it doesn't seem to have had much impact on the way they think about this issue. Ever since September 11, the administration and its allies have acted as though the population of anti-American terrorists in the world is fixed, and if we can just find them and kill them, the threat will disappear.
And Roger Bybee writes that doctors are now pushing for a reform of our health care system:
But the AMA faces a vastly different landscape today. Less than one-third of doctors belong to the AMA, as physicians increasingly identify with organizations based on their medical specialty. Moreover, despite the AMA's harsh and incessant preaching against single-payer health care as "socialized medicine" and its active promotion of myths about "rationing" and "long waiting lines" in single-payer nations, the group's own national polling has shown a dramatic shift in its members' view of reform over the past 15 years or so. Where only 18 percent of AMA members favored single-payer reform in 1992, the figure had soared to 42 percent by 2004.
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--The Editors
