Flit

Iraqi polling

Zogby International has conducted a decent survey in Iraq. Hat tip to Real Clear Politics for referring to the opinionjournal.com article (with selected results). The Zogby International page describing the poll can be found here. You can buy the results at the same page.

In short, Iraq has a 60%-70% optimistic majority, the US is more popular than Iraq's neighbors with the Iraqi people, the Iraqis don't much like the US military but don't want us to pack up right away either.

All in all, a useful bit of reality to counteract the hysterical spin emanating from all quarters.

Andrew Sullivan forgets it's not always about him

The Catholic Church deserves a lot of brickbats for the pedophilia scandals but sometimes its detractors go too far. News flash, Andrew Sullivan, just because the bishops screw up on one front does not lessen their responsibility to call for greater morality on all fronts. The article in question, True and False Reform is a well thought out examination of where do we go from here and deserves reading by followers of any venerable institution in need of major reform.

Stick a Fork in It

In a September 9 item, Strategy Page let's us know who the real paper tiger is. Apparently, North Korea is so short of fuel that they could not spare enough to keep up appearances at their national parade. For the first time this year there were no vehicles in the parade.

And these people are supposed to pull off an invasion of S. Korea, how? Maybe it's time to start thinking about amnesties and exile to solve the problem of the current N. Korean dictatorship.