Quick hits

* Seymour Hersh: "There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq."

* Figures from the Interior Ministry in Iraq continue to show civilian deaths on the rise. The announced October toll, according to Reuters, was 1,289, "nearly 42 a day and up 18 percent from the 1,089 seen in September, itself a record for this particular series of data."

* The LA Times and CS Monitor investigate why US troop casualties were so high last month. In total, 104 soldiers were killed, the highest monthly toll since November 2004, when the Americans last tried to knock down Fallujah.

* "The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week," writes E&P's Greg Mitchell. "On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners."

* "A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos," the NY Times reports, "in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict."

* So, "Do you want us to win in Iraq?" That seems to be an increasingly popular cry from war apologists and GOP shills.

* Via MediaLens, Les Roberts, one of the more prominent researchers behind the Lancet survey of Iraq mortality, responds to some of the common criticisms of the study.

* "So we are in the trenches of another election season, and if you peer closely you can see the explosions on the horizon," Joshua Frank observes. "I've yet to be convinced the Democrats have the capacity to take back Congress, and to tell you the truth I don't really care if they do. Not only do they not have the ability to lead, they also do not possess the moral impetus to change the direction of this war if they are lucky enough to regain control. Indeed, they are just as responsible for the ruin in Iraq and back home as the Bushites."

* Taking a different stance, "watching from afar," Jonathan Freedland says Americans have a duty come the Midterms to, above all, "hobble [Bush] badly".

* Karl Rove Announces Plans to Steal Election? Obviously related: "How to Stop the November Elections from Being Stolen."

* Bob Parry, stating things rather bluntly: "Al-Qaeda Wants Republicans to Win."

* The killing in Gaza, Patrick Seale declares in an IHT op-ed, "continues on a daily basis - by tank and sniper fire, by air and sea bombardment, and by undercover teams in civilian clothes sent into Arab territory to ambush and murder, an Israeli specialty perfected over the past several decades. How long," he asks, "will the 'international community' allow the slaughter to continue? The cruel repression of the occupied territories, and of Gaza in particular, is one of the most scandalous in the world today."

* Here's a gloomy, yet strangely inspirational, talk by Bill Moyers on the current and future state of America.

* Carl Bloice notes the "return of the Bell Curve," as evidenced by the willingness of observers to accept gross levels of inequality as a natural -- or unavoidable -- feature of contemporary life.

* In his typically uncompromising style, Ed Herman peers behind "The Liberals Answer Tony Judt's 'Useful Idiots' Charge."

* BBC Monitoring previews the forthcoming arrival of Al Jazeera International, which is allegedly going to hit the ground running later this month.

* Olivier Roy boils down some recent history of Islamist movements, highlighting a "main shift" in ideology and tactics over the last decade that is "far more nationalist than Islamist."

* Brian Tokar offers "The Real Scoop on Biofuels." They are far from the magic bullet needed to solve our problems with energy and resource depletion, he stresses.