More News & Opinion

Michael Yon -- our intrepid boy reporter - is still in Baqubah and has riveting details of Operation Arrow Ripper. His reporting from Iraq continues to be a MUST READ for anyone interested in what's REALLY going on there (and should be required reading for Carl Levin, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, et al.!)

Media reports indicating that many top leaders escaped before Arrowhead Ripper began appear to be mostly true. But other information suggests some AQI leaders are trapped just down the road from where I write. In addition to the seven men who were caught trying to escape while dressed as women, there is information that some AQI leaders remain trapped in a constricting cordon.

Be sure to read "Drilling for Justice" (and everyone please send it to your elected representatives in Washington, DC regardless of political affiliation or intelectual capacity... or maybe those are one & the same?)

Pete Hegseth, an Iraq War veteran and executive director of Vets for Freedom has an editorial today in the Washington Post in response to Carl Levin's OpEd piece last week.

In his op-ed, Sen. Levin invoked the example of Abraham Lincoln, who endured years of challenges before finding the right generals and strategy to win the Civil War. After four years of uncertainty in Iraq, America finally has both the general and the strategy to turn the tide. The question is whether 2007 will unfold like 1865 or 1969.

Be sure to read Reality Check for the Antiwar Crowd.

And someone should remind the Congress that this is what we're fighting [against]:

Iran’s state telecommunications company is offering rewards to citizens who turn in their neighbors for sending or receiving “immoral” messages on their cell phones, according to a report in The News International. -- FoxNews

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) had tarnished its name here by publicly attacking and murdering children, videotaping beheadings, all while imposing harsh punishments on Iraqi civilians found guilty of violating morality laws prohibiting activities like smoking. The AQI installed Sharia court had sanctioned the amputation of the two “smoking fingers” for those who violated anti-smoking laws. --Michael Yon

Other AQI edicts included beatings for men who refused to grow beards, and corporal punishments for obscene sexual suggestiveness, defined by such “loose” behavior as carrying tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag. -- Michael Yon

Militants will continue to target Westerners on the streets of Indonesia as they fight to impose full Islamic law, an accused terror leader told CNN. -- CNN