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Saturday, November 10, 2012

An Orca Too Far

These scenes from "A Bridge Too Far" could have easily have been about the failure of the Romney campaign's ORCA vote-monitoring platform.  The movie concerned Operation Market-Garden in the Second World War, where a failure in communications equipment contributed to disaster for the Allies.




Zac Moffatt said that data about 14.2 million voters was recorded through Orca, including 5,397 instances of polling-place irregularities, and that data came back from 91 percent of counties being monitored.

-- Washington Post, November 9, 2012

Thus ended in failure the greatest airborne venture of the war. Although General Montgomery asserted that it had been 90 percent successful, his statement was merely a consoling figure of speech. All objectives save Arnhem had been won, but without Arnhem the rest were as nothing. In return for so much courage and sacrifice the Allies had won a 50-mile salient -- leading nowhere.

-- Airborne Operations In World War II European Theater