ThinkFast: August 9, 2006

• 60. The percentage of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq, “the highest number since polling on the subject began with the commencement of the war in March 2003.” 57 percent supported a timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq.
• 1,855. Number of bodies that showed up at the Baghdad morgue in July, “a 16 percent rise from June and a 71 percent increase from January.”
• The United Nations has stopped deliveries of aid to southern Lebanese villages “because of the danger on the roads” and because the “last bridge over the Litani River north of Tyre had been blown up.” The World Health Organization “warned that if fuel is not delivered soon, 60 percent of the hospitals in Lebanon will ‘simply cease to function.’”
• The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a U.S. war crimes law “passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions.” The changes would mean interrogators would no longer face possible prosecution for committing “outrages upon [the] personal dignity” of prisoners. The plan has “provoked concern at the International Committee of the Red Cross.”
• The “ridiculous” trailer situation in Louisiana: “Nearly 1,200 St. Bernard Parish families are still waiting to get into trailers that sit locked on their home sites but need utilities or other services, and 400 families waiting for trailers have none at all.” “The families say countless calls to FEMA have failed to help.” [This just in: 10,000 FEMA trailers are rotting away in the Arkansas mud (your wallet is $1 billion lighter for that travesty), and even worse, the government has unused, undeployed trailers sitting right there in Louisiana.]