BY JAMES TARANTO
Friday, June 13, 2003 3:02 p.m. EDT
Bush to Hamas: Drop Dead
On Tuesday we criticized President Bush for going soft on terrorism. But even the president's harshest detractors can't deny one of his best qualities: He has the humility to realize when he's wrong and change course. "The Bush administration signaled strong support for Israel's crackdown on militant groups yesterday, effectively abandoning its earlier criticism of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon," the Washington Post reports.
Is That a Promise or a Threat?
"A Sudden, Violent End for a Promising Youth" reads the headline of a New York Times report from the Middle East today. It's a profile not of one of the victims of Hamas's bus massacre Wednesday, but of the perpetrator, 18-year-old Abdel Madi Shabneh of Hebron. Carrying out a suicide attack takes training, so how "sudden" could it have been?
Red Alert
"Not that there's anything wrong with communism, which, as the movie rightly points out, once represented the dream of justice and equality."--film critic Louis Templado, Asahi Shimbun News Service (Japan), June 13
"A mass grave, containing hundreds of Buddhist monks and civilians executed in Stalinist purges in the 1930s, has been found in the Mongolian capital."--7am.com News, June 12
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Another Benefit of Iraq's Liberation
The sound of wedding bells can be heard once again in the streets of Baghdad. Reuters reports that the Iraqi capital's only functioning civil court has begun registering marriages again, after a two-month hiatus. But "the court is so overwhelmed and under-resourced that the only service it currently provides is approving marriages." In other words, no divorces.Who'd have thought Operation Iraqi Freedom would be such a triumph for traditional family values?
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WASHINGTON — A short conflict that used fewer missiles, sparked fewer oil field fires and created fewer refugees than anticipated produced a lower-than-expected financial cost for the major combat in Iraq.
That means President Bush won't have to go back to Congress for additional funding this year, a step that could have revived the debate over the war.
A detailed account of expenses won't be complete for months, but senior administration officials say the cost of deployment and combat will be just less than the $62.6 billion Congress approved in March as emergency funding for Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is the first time officials have offered a tally.
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