Sunni and Shiite are uniting to fight Al Qaeda:

Commanders in the field think they have tapped into a genuine public expression of reconciliation that has outpaced the elected government’s progress on mending the sectarian rift.

“What you find is these people have lived together for decades with no problem until the terrorists arrived and tried to instigate the problem,” said Lt. Col. Valery Keaveny, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 509th Airborne unit in the Iskandariya area south of Baghdad. “So they are perfectly willing to work together to keep the terrorists out.”

Note that this is grass roots, bottom-up cooperation. Over time, let’s hope that it filters its way up to the government itself. If Iraq is really becoming a democracy, it should.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of civil wars, it’s been a dozen dozen years, seven score and four, since Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address. Here’s my post on the subject from three years ago.

in Iraq?

I’m guessing it’s not Harry and Nancy.

Michael Yon, with more signs that the war is over, and Al Qaeda defeated.

Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John

Michael Yon, with more signs that the war is over, and Al Qaeda defeated.

Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John

Michael Yon, with more signs that the war is over, and Al Qaeda defeated.

Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John

In Iraq, databases of DNA, fingerprints and iris scans have been collected from entire city populations. They brought in ballistics and other forensics experts. They train troops in staying alive and police in evidence handling. They conduct IED clearing operations. They analyze the IEDs. They analyze, profile, they catch in the act sometimes via UAV and roll up the cell.

Then they do it again when the cells evolve to foil the latest counters.

Stanley Kurtz writes about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Waziristan.

Tragically, this may be the only solution:

No patchwork scheme

Stanley Kurtz writes about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Waziristan.

Tragically, this may be the only solution:

No patchwork scheme

Stanley Kurtz writes about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Waziristan.

Tragically, this may be the only solution:

No patchwork scheme

Are we too cheap to stop asteroid strikes? You decide:

Scott Pace, head of program analysis and evaluation at NASA, said the agency could not do more to detect NEOs “given the constrained resources and the strategic objectives NASA already has been tasked with.”

If there is a one in 26 million chance that an asteroid strike will kill everyone in the world, that’s an expectation of 230 deaths per year. That’s within a stone’s throw of the average number of deaths from terrorist attacks on US soil in the last ten years. It’s interesting to watch the difference between overreacting to terrorism and underreacting to understood harms such as auto accidents.

Not that I think war in Iraq was a bad idea, just that ‘War on Terror’ is an inapt name. The operation name ‘Iraqi Freedom’ was more apt.