Bush numerology

Tom Engelhardt picked up on a Bush fixation with a certain number. He's discussing a press conference in December 2005, when Bush was asked how many Iraqis had died in this war:

To the surprise of many, the President responded for the first time with an actual number: "How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis." When asked for the President's sourcing, Press Spokesman Scott McClellan responded two days later with "media reports which have cited information that suggests that some 30,000 people, Iraqi citizens, may have been killed."

As it happens, the White House has had something of a predilection for the pleasantly round number of 30,000. In 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, in the President's State of the Union Address, he used that very number for Saddam's mythical stock of "munitions capable of delivering chemical agents"; and, post-invasion, for police put back on patrol in the streets of Iraq. In 2005, that number was cited both for "new businesses" started in Iraq and new teachers trained since the fall of Baghdad. In 2006, in the President's "Strategy for Victory," that was the number of square miles of their country that Iraqi forces were then primarily responsible for patrolling.

I wonder what's up with that. Is 30,000 some kind of special number in fundamentalist Christian lore or somethign? One of those wink-and-nod signals to the Christian Right base?

Did anybody see or read Bush's press conference today? Short version: American troops aren't pulling out of the Iraq War as long as Bush has anything to say about it. Setting a timetable for withdrawal would be Defeat. And we're going to achieve Victory. And things are really pretty good in Iraq because "there is farmers farming" and stuff like that.

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