When the Facts Get Tough, the Tough Stop Fact-Gathering

Today we learn that the Bush administration has stopped informing Congress on a key quality of life issue in Baghdad:

U.S. drops Baghdad electricity reports

WASHINGTON -- As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on....

But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly "status report" for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day.

Those pesky facts, messing up a perfectly good propaganda campaign full of turned corners, painted schools and bustling marketplaces. Kind of reminds you of those inconvenient Iraqi civilian deaths, doesn’t it?

Military officials say they do not have precise figures or even estimates of the number of noncombatant Iraqis killed and wounded by American-led forces in Iraq.

"We don't keep a list," said a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell. "It's just not policy."

It’s just not this administration’s policy to keep track of unpleasant realities in many areas, is it? Like ... oh, say ... global warming:

NASA shelves climate satellites

Environmental science may suffer

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff  |  June 9, 2006

NASA is canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment.

The space agency has shelved a 0 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture -- a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled.

Sheesh. The last thing we want is "critical information" about the climate crisis, the infrastructure in post-surge Baghdad or how many innocent people we’re liberating from life in Iraq. If you don’t measure it, it doesn’t exist in the faith-based governing model we now live under.