Canada voids Islamic religious “justice.”
GOOD NEWS IN MOSUL: A soldier looks on the bright side. There has been some success at Tal Afar as well. But this is the underlying reality:
But as with previous battles, like those in Falluja and Qaim, a western city near Syria, a large number of insurgents also escaped the fight. That makes the battle, at least in some measure, the latest example of one of the most nettlesome problems faced in the war, what one marine in Anbar Province recently described as “punching a balloon”: American forces attack with overwhelming firepower only to have some insurgents leave and then return, or move on to fight elsewhere.
One year ago, Tal Afar was the scene of a major offensive to oust entrenched insurgents. After the battle, American commanders said the city was safe. But the military, stretched thin by demand for troops elsewhere, left fewer than 500 soldiers in Tal Afar and a surrounding area twice the size of Connecticut. Predictably, American officers said, the insurgents returned in force and were largely undisturbed until May, when Colonel McMaster’s unit, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, was reassigned from south of Baghdad to take back the region from insurgents.
As long as Rumsfeld refuses to provide enough troops to do the job, or dramatically alters strategy, we will fail in Iraq.
THE PALESTINIAN REALITY: From anti-Christian pogroms on the West Bank to the torching of synagogues in Gaza, you get a glimpse of what basis there is for a tolerant, pluralist Palestinian state.
The Dish 