Well said, sir.

Printed on the flag held in distress position:

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

Just a reminder

That there's a war going on that we started:

BAGHDAD: A total of 258 Iraqis were killed in violence in February, a sharp rise from the previous month that saw the lowest casualty figures since the 2003 US-led invasion, authorities said Sunday. Statistics compiled by the Defense, Interior and Health ministries showed that 211 civilians, 17 soldiers and 30 policemen lost their lives to violence across the country in February.

The death toll was up 35 percent on January's total of 191, which was the lowest figure since 2003. The latest casualty figures also showed that 456 civilians, 31 soldiers and 61 police were wounded in February.

The increase was in part attributable to a bloody February 13 suicide bombing in Iskandiriyya when at least 35 Shiite pilgrims on their way to the holy city of Kerbala for a major religious ceremony were killed.

"Because there were several suicide attacks in February, like the incident in Iskandiriyya, the toll of the victims increased during the month," said a senior police official who declined to be identified.

In total of more than 50 people died in a spate of attacks during the Arbaeen commemorations, which mark 40 days after the Ashura anniversary of the killing of Imam Hussein by Sunni caliph Yazid's armies in AD 680.

Attacks remain common in Baghdad and in provinces such as Diyala and Nineveh, where Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents remain active, as well as during religious festivals.

Since when is bombing children a good idea?

And don't quote anything from Bush or Cheney....

The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza conflict climbed to more than 1,000 today after nearly three weeks of intensive Israeli bombing and fighting on the ground.

So far, 1,010 Palestinians have been killed, among them 315 children and 95 women, Dr Moawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza's medical emergency services, told the Guardian. The number of injured after 19 days of fighting stood at 4,700, he said.

As Israeli troops fought on the outskirts of Gaza City after another night of heavy bombing and shelling, diplomatic efforts to end the conflict intensified, with the secretary-general of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, in Cairo for urgent talks. He is calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The Israelis may have won this battle, but they've lost the war.

How to justify terrorism

Which comes in many forms:

Former McCain-Palin campaign spokesman and current Weekly Standard editor Michael Goldfarb notes that Israel, a couple of days ago, dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on a Gazan home which killed a top Hamas leader . . . in addition to 18 others, including his four wives and nine of his children.

[snip]

There are few concepts more elastic and subject to exploitation than "Terrorism," the all-purpose justifying and fear-mongering term. But if it means anything, it means exactly the mindset which Goldfarb is expressing: slaughtering innocent civilians in order to "send a message," to "deter" political actors by making them fear that continuing on the same course will result in the deaths of civilians and -- best of all, from the Terrorist's perspective -- even their own children and other family members.

To the Terrorist, by definition, that innocent civilians and even children are killed isn't a regrettable cost of taking military action. It's not a cost at all. It's a benefit. It has strategic value. Goldfarb explicitly says this: "to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause."

That, of course, is the very same logic that leads Hamas to send suicide bombers to slaughter Israeli teenagers in pizza parlors and on buses and to shoot rockets into their homes. It's the logic that leads Al Qaeda to fly civilian-filled airplanes into civilian-filled office buildings. And it's the logic that leads infinitely weak and deranged people like Goldfarb and Peretz to find value in the killing of innocent Palestinians, including -- one might say, at least in Goldfarb's case: especially -- children.

If you do it, it's terrorism. If I do it, it's heroic and patriotic defense of my country.

Maybe Israel thinks the Obama administration won't approve

But they know the Bush administration understands completely and approves:

John Ging, the head of the UN relief agency in Gaza, described the situation there as "inhuman".

"We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for the civilian population," he said. "The people of Gaza City and the north now have no water. That comes on top of having no electricity. They're trapped, they're traumatised, they're terrorised by this situation.

"They're in their homes. They're not safe. They're being killed and injured in large numbers, and they have no end in sight. The inhumanity of this situation, the lack of action to bring this to an end, is bewildering to them."

The UN has been particularly angered at the contention of the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Ging also accused Israel of a campaign of destroying public buildings vital to the administration and governance of Gaza.

"The whole infrastructure of the future state of Palestine is being destroyed," he said. "Blowing up the parliament building. That's the parliament of Palestine. That's not a Hamas building. The president's compound is for the president of Palestine. Schools, mosques."

And it's Hamas' fault for starting this war, even though the Palestinians have been suffering:

While firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, too, is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.

According to the UN, most of Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological trauma.

Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel, equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.

Gaza is one of the world's most-densely populated places, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people. In the past, they threw stones at their Israeli occupiers; now they launch home-made rockets.

Call it a prison riot, writ large.

Exactly.

Winning hearts and minds

And making more terrorists by the minute:

US-led coalition forces killed 76 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan today, most of them children, the country's Interior Ministry said.

The coalition denied killing civilians. Civilian deaths in military operations have become an emotive issue among Afghans, many of whom feel international forces take too little care when launching air strikes, undermining support for their presence.

"Seventy-six civilians, most of them women and children, were martyred today in a coalition forces operation in Herat province," the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Coalition forces bombarded the Azizabad area of Shindand district in Herat province this afternoon, the ministry said. Nineteen of the victims were women, seven of them men and the rest children under the age of 15, it said.

US-led coalition forces denied killing any civilians. They said 30 militants had been killed in an air strike in Shindand district in the early hours of this morning and no further air strikes had been launched in the area later in the day.