Remember, They Said 200 THOUSAND AK-47s And Other Small Arms Had Gone Missing In Iraq?

Upon hearing the news, my iconoclastic Santa Fe pal, Jim Terr, bestirred himself to pen the following LTE:

TO: Santa Fe New Mexican, August 9, 2007)

Happy face

I think we should be careful not to exaggerate the significance of the 190,000 firearms unaccounted for by U.S. officials in Iraq. Even assuming only 10 rounds of ammo per weapon, that would only be enough to put a bullet in the heads of fewer than 2 million people — less than 10 percent of the population of Iraq, even after taking down all the American soldiers there.

It’s tempting to use news like this to feed a dark view of the situation, but only if we ignore the fact that we’ve brought electricity, water, sanitation, education, peace, security, freedom and democracy to these previously beleaguered people.

Jim's an excellent snarksman. But he forwarded an addendum by Peter Weiss, which magnifies the original so aptly:

Or you could look at it this way, In addition to the electricity, water, sanitation, education, peace, security, freedom and democracy, we have also now provided them, free of charge, with useful tools to hunt down and kill rats and dogs so they can have food to eat. You know, "give a man a rat and he eats for a day, give him an AK-47 and teach him to shoot it and he can eat rats forever."

Who says there's no good news from Iraq?
Just them damn doomsayers, and cut-n-run"Defeatocrats"!