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During the last week of the conflict in Iraq, the British press has given few Iraqis as much ink as Ali Ismail Abbas, the badly burned 12-year-old who lost his mother, his father and his arms during an American airstrike. His story is profoundly and obviously tragic... In today’s Daily Telegraph, Ali Ismail Abbas finally hits back: "'The journalists always promise to evacuate me - why don't they do it now?' he asked, his brow furrowed with pain and glistening with sweat." Day after day, reporters and camera crews have wallowed into Ali’s view, making promises they can’t keep.

"But Marge, it works on any Ayatollah!" --Homer Simpson defending his purchase of a ten-year-old "Ayatollah Assaholah!" t-shirt... But the bit of news that has bothered me most was the report that southern Iraq's "Grand Ayatollah," Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa ordering his Shi'ite followers not to resist incoming American, British and Australian troops. Sure, I completely understand the concept of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," but since when has America ever benefited in the long run from any fatwa issued by any ayatollah (much less a "grand ayatollah," a title that makes al-Sistani sound like he...

With a massive budget deficit, a year-old hole in the ground where once $100 billion worth of office building stood and 3,000 lives were lost, with a mayor whose biggest concern is whether or not his citizens escape to Marlboro country when they drown their sorrows at the corner saloon, New York City clearly doesn't have enough problems. That's why it was such great news that the United States Olympic Committee announced last week that the Big Apple would be America's nominee to host the 2012 Olympics. It's not only that there are so many reasons to hate the Olympics...

And what's the story on his new last name - is he a Muslim convert like attempted shoebomber Richard Reid? Muslim converts, like converts to any religion, can often be a hell of a lot more zealous (and annoying) than those born into a particular faith. And if this is the guy, and there is a Muslim motivation, will the authorities attempt to play it down, like they did with the guy who shot up the El Al counter at LAX on the 4th of July?

I'm not really sure what I expected when I pulled the lever for Mike Bloomberg in the New York City mayoral elections nearly a year ago. Looking back on it, I'm not even sure I expected him to win, considering his 16-point deficit in the polls just a week before the election. More than anything else, I wanted to at least register my distaste for the opportunistic, weasely Mark Green, whose desperation to live in Gracie Mansion was even more off-putting than Al Gore's lust for the White House. But Bloomberg did win, thanks in no small part to a...

NY TIMES SELF-PARODY WATCH. From Tuesday's editorial page:"During the Truman administration, some strategists suggested attacking the Soviet Union while it was still militarily weak to prevent the rise of a nuclear-armed Communist superpower. Wiser heads prevailed, and for the next 40 years America's reliance on a strategy of deterrence preserved an uneasy but durable peace." Yeah, it's great that millions of people got to live under Soviet tyranny, die in gulags, and boil their shoes for soup for four decades while the rest of us in the West did duck-and-cover drills. Thank Christ the United States didn't swagger in there...

PEACEFUL RELIGION WATCH, EXHIBIT #4,502: 'A Nigerian Islamic court today threw out an appeal by a young woman sentenced to be stoned to death for bearing a child out of wedlock and ordered her to be executed once her child is weaned.

Mary McGrory has filed a Sunday column that reads like a parody of Maureen Dowd. The ancient columnist actually took a report on "Botox parties" (a left-coast phenomenon if there ever was one) and tried to somehow, with great mirth and wit, tie them into Washington and her general hatred of the Bush administration.

Australia has come up with some pretty cool inventions over the years. The Hill's Hoist. Penfold's Grange. Even the infamous, indestructible "black box" (which isn't black, by the way) was developed down under. Now, though, this proud tradition of innovation has taken a dark turn as Australian pro-euthanasia advocates, including Dr. Philip Nitschke of Nancy Crick fame, plan to give away specially-designed "exit bags" - that is, plastic bags designed to be put over one's head for the express purpose of ending one's life.

Why is it that the Arab world, with all its potential oil wealth, is still such a backward place, both economically and politically? Why is it that the hundreds of millions of people who make up the Arab world are incapable of producing more non-petroleum-related goods than Finland? And why can't the culture come up with anything more to offer the world than homicide bombers and Osama bin Laden? According to the New York Times' Tom Friedman, riffing on a U.N.-sponsored report by a bunch of Arab intellectuals bemoaning the state of the Arab world, the problem is "a shortage...