I’ll be in orbit, working on the satellites, until Wednesday or so. I may be in sporadic contact before then. In the mean time, keep visiting this page to keep my traffic numbers up. Thanks!
[source]
INTERESTING STORY ON WOMEN’S HEALTHCARE IN AFGHANISTAN, in this Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs employee magazine. (It’s a PDF, so scroll to page 8). My question: Why is this story buried in this relatively obscure magazine? It seems like it would be worthy of more attention. I guess it’s another example of the Administration’s PR program dropping the ball. Or maybe the mainstream press wasn’t interested.
The story is of American doctors who, by instituting some basic rules, dramatically reduced the infection and maternal mortality rates at a hospital in Afghanistan. One is left to ask of the Bush Administration, who did they hire for communications, the Isreali’s PR team? On the other hand, it might well be that President Bush and most of his top officials could talk about this non-stop 24×7 and it still wouldn’t be reported. On the other hand, Bush should have a set of these at the ready to fire back at hostile questioners.
Spot On! [via Instapundit] points out that while Big Media isn’t covering the anti-Sadr protests in Najaf, the Associated Press is willing to cover a single anti-President Bush protestor. Could the AP have a bit of an agenda?
Representatives of Iraq’s most influential Shiite leaders met here on Tuesday and demanded that Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, withdraw militia units from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop turning the mosques there into weapons arsenals and return power to Iraqi police and civil defense units that operate under American control.
The Shiite leaders also called, in speeches and in interviews after the meeting, for a rapid return to the American-led negotiations on Iraq’s political future. The negotiations have been sidelined for weeks by the upsurge in violence associated with Mr. Sadr’s uprising across central and southern Iraq and the simultaneous fighting in Falluja, the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad.
On Tuesday, the Shiite leaders, including a representative of a Shiite clerical group that has close ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, effectively did what the Americans have urged them to do since Mr. Sadr, a 31-year-old firebrand, began his attacks in April: they tied Iraq’s future, and that of Shiites in particular, to a renunciation of violence and a return to negotiations.
Unlike our own dead-enders, the Shia leaders have figured out that the end point of any negotiations with the USA will be an independent Iraq with most of the power in the hands of Iraqi Shia. The results of either of the insurgents succeeding will be either a new blood-Ba’ath or Iranian control of Iraq.
Mexico’s ambassador to Cuba returned home Monday amid a diplomatic rift with Havana that widened significantly, with Peru announcing that it too would recall its ambassador on the island. […]
The moves followed weekend criticism of Mexico and Peru by President Fidel Castro for recently voting in support of a U.S.-backed U.N. condemnation of Cuba’s human rights record.
Maybe Mexico and Peru were afraid that their ambassadors would get beat up for saying things like this:
”A democratic government in Mexico could not continue with the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s complicity with the Cuban dictatorship,” former foreign minister José Castañeda told a Mexico City radio station Monday.
Ooooh, that’s gotta hurt.
NAJAF, Iraq — One of his friends was dead, 12 others lay wounded and the four soldiers still left standing were surrounded and out of ammunition. So Salvadoran Cpl. Samuel Toloza said a prayer, whipped out his knife and charged the Iraqi gunmen.
In one of the only known instances of hand-to-hand combat in the Iraq conflict, Cpl. Toloza stabbed several attackers swarming around a comrade. The stunned assailants backed away momentarily, just as a relief column came to the unit’s rescue. […]
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said recently that the Central American unit has “gained a fantastic reputation among the coalition” and expressed hope that the Salvadorans will stay beyond their scheduled departure.
Phil Kosnett, who leads the Coalition Provisional Authority office in this holy Shi’ite city, says he owes his life to Salvadorans who repelled a well-executed insurgent attack on his three-car convoy in March. He has nominated six of them for the U.S. Army’s Bronze Star medal.
“You hear this snotty phrase ‘coalition of the billing’ for some of the smaller contingents,” said Mr. Kosnett, referring to the apparent eagerness of some nations to charge their Iraq operations to Washington. “The El Sals? No way. These guys are punching way above their weight. They’re probably the bravest and most professional troops I’ve every worked with.”
[…]
“Our country came out of a similar situation as in Iraq 12 years ago, so people in El Salvador can understand what is happening here,” said Col. Calidonio
Interesting, isn’t it, that people who have a better understanding of what’s at stake are more pro-Coalition than the pampered sods who populate the Western intelligentsia?