Q: How do you say "damned lies" in Arabic?

A: From yesterday's Morning Edition, NPR's Guy Raz illustrates that statistics are BS, especially in Iraq and especially especially when the Pentagon's involved. Case in point:

Sometime around February 2004, a top military official in Iraq estimated that there were about 15,000 total insurgents. About a year later, U.S. military leaders in Iraq announced that 15,000 insurgents had been killed or captured in the previous year.

In private, a skeptical military adviser pointed out to commanders that the numbers didn't make sense. "If all the insurgents were killed," he asked, "why are they fighting harder than ever?"

Hey, good question.

Karen DeYoung, in the Washington Post, came to the same conclusion: The Pentagon manipulates numbers. DeYoung's been on this beat for a while.

The Pentagon lying isn't exactly news, no matter what year it is, but under the Bush administration, these lies are intended as more than just a means of boosting American morale — they're the casus belli. More on this later.

RELATED: NPR's Day to Day talks to Karen DeYoung

Q: What's the United States top cash crop?

A: Not corn and not wheat. In fact, according to the findings in a newly released study, one popular lil' plant is more lucrative than corn and wheat combined.

Can you guess what it is? The answer may surprise you... unless you're as stoned as the majority of my readership.

$uper Skunk: From xPat's designer seed collection.

Yep, that's right: It's weed, with a gross annual value topping $35 billion, according to a newly released report.

• Pot is called biggest cash crop [LATimes]

SACRAMENTO — For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're citing government statistics to prove it.

A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.

I'm way more surprised that hay is top-three material than I am by marijuana's dominance, but I digress¹.

Some might assume that Jon Gettman, the report's author, skewed the numbers to exaggerate the dope biz's success, given that Gettman is head of the pro-medical marijuana Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, and has a vested interest in hyping the War on Drugs' failures. A quick review of the math, though, suggests that -- although Gettman's numbers do involve a lot of guesswork -- his conclusions may actually be on the conservative side.

The $35 billion figure is based on the following basic estimates (and you can download the entire report as a PDF here):

1. Domestic marijuana production is 10,000 metric tons (or 22 million lbs.) annually, according to a 2005 State Department report.
2. Gettman estimates average value of a pound of pot at $1,600 to producers (not to be confused with street value, commonly cited by law enforcement agencies to be between $2,000 and $4,000 per pound, according to the LA Times' piece).

First off, that valuation of marijuana's street value strikes me as preposterously low. Consider: $4,000/lb. = $250/ounce = $31.25 per eighth.

In my experience, you'll have a hard impossible time finding pot even close to that cheap (let alone half that). As far as I've ever known, the going rate is $50 -- and while you might find it as low as $40, you'll be more likely to pay $60.

In New York, you'll pay much more than that: $30 per delivered gram is not uncommon, which equates to more then $105 per eighth (note to self: no wonder we could barely afford to eat). The only place I've ever seen weed for under $40 is dirt-poor Athens, Ohio.

Gettman himself calls the estimate of $1,600/lb. (in production value) conservative. I have no clue how we might devise a more realistic number here, but even $2,400/lb. equates to just $18.75/eighth wholesale -- and that would push the total domestic crop value to over $52 billion.

The bigger problem, though, is probably that first number, the State Department's estimate of total domestic marijuana production. For one thing, 10,000 metric tons looks like a grossly rounded number, even for an estimate. For another thing, government offices have a history of making shit up, partly because they have no idea and partly because inflating the numbers works as a great scare tactic in the effort to drum up public funding.

I'd like to explore that issue further, but I'm going to save that for a follow-up post tomorrow, because (a) I'm running long and (b) if I have to spend one more minute today trying to make sense of the gobbledygook that humanity calls "statistics"², I'm going to stab my eyes out.

ALSO: Speaking of things that make me want to stab my eyes out, take a gander at the response to this study from Tom Riley, White House spokesman. Maybe he was high when he said it, but what the hell is his point here?

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¹ Subsequent Googling indicates I had good reason to be surprised; the Times is wrong. According to the EPA's data from 2000, hay ranks third in acreage but fifth in cash receipts. Just another reminder that you can't trust journalists.

Oh, wait, maybe they're just looking at old data from 1997, maybe because they did their research using Wikipedia. Or maybe they have newer data that I just can't find. In summary, I have no fucking clue. Just another reminder that you can't trust the government, Wikipedia, statistics the farming industry or my blog.

² For more on this, see the footnotes. Oh, wait, you already did.