Oops — counted wrong

How wrong can you be? An article “Estimates by U.S. See More Rebels With More Funds” by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker in The New York Times yesterday said senior American officials have raised the estimate of the number of insurgents, previously 2,000 to 7,000, to 8,000 to 12,000. So it is either about twice as bad as we thought (comparing the maximums) or about four times as bad (comparing the minimums).
If the new portrait is just spin designed to keep Americans too frightened to think, it is its own brand of terrorism. If the new estimate is true and the wealth of the Saudis is behind the insurgency with the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein’s relatives still in charge, as the article states, then we have not removed Hussein from power.
And between you and me, I’m not feeling like we have made the world or ourselves any safer.