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Here’s a good ending for a Reservist returning to his job after spending some time in Injun Country: Sherwood, OR police chief reinstated.
--ry

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When even Reuters starts having trouble spinning it negative, you know things are getting better. Best they could come up with was a snarky, "With good news so rare, little wonder Bush has seized on the change in Anbar" before going back to detail the improvements. For a reporter who was embedded in al Qaim in 2005, acknowledging the change in both conditions and attitude seems (happily) unavoidable:

Some skeptics worry that the fighting could return if the tribes fall out with one another or become impatient with a lack of support from the central government in Baghdad.

But Sheikh Mausuf is spending $120,000 to rebuild his house because he thinks it will stay quiet.

"All Iraqis now know who the insurgents are, and we will never allow them back," he said.

In more good news, things are looking encouraging on the political front in Iraq. This time it's the AP who find themselves having to report the good news. It's tentative, but it's moving in the right direction.

On the domestic front, I missed the Malkin vs. Rivera story entirely, not being a daily reader of the big political sites. But this bit caught my eye: apparently the aftermath is irony (hypocrisy?) squared. Check out the last paragraph.

Powerline suffers through the transcript of Bin Laden's latest video:

Fourth, the extent to which bin Laden's talk is a pastiche of liberal cliches and conspiracy theories is striking. He obviously has access to our newspapers, and it sounds like he may be a fan of left-wing web sites as well. Thus, "all of mankind is in danger because of...global warming." The Kennedy assassination finds its way into the story: it was ordered by "the owners of major corporations who were benefiting from [the Vietnam war's] continuation." [snip]

I'm starting to think bin Laden is a regular poster on the Daily Kos.

Sorry. I'll behave myself now.

--FbL (sitting primly and with sober countenance)

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I love this phrase...just discovered it and wish I'd thought of it. It's my new motto.

"A-10s are proof that God loves Grunts."

This, of course, includes Marines. :) - Instapilot

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Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.

*Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*

The UAVs (oops, can't call 'em UAVs anymore - they're now Unmanned Aerial Systems... some Colonel got his Legion of Merit for that change...), er, um UAS's we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.

I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to. It's also an open trackback, so if someone has a post they're proud of, but it really isn't either Castle kind of stuff, or topical to a particular post, I've basically given blanket permission to use that post for that purpose. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone"