I'm surprised that this has not been diaried already but I could not find any references to it in a "Search".

Several days ago, on 6 July, an early morning wedding procession in eastern Afghanistan's Nargarhar Region was crossing through a pass in a ridge separating two valleys when they were bombed by American planes. It was to have been a big double wedding between two families, with each family exchanging a bride and a groom.

What began as celebration ended with maybe 52 people dead, most of them women and children, and others badly injured.

BBC News

I’ll tell you who’s ba-bombing right now: John McCain. Sure, we still have to do a lot of work to prevent him from mounting a comeback, but barring big surprises, the odds are against him.

If Iran stays unbombed to Obama’s inauguration day, it will probably see only diplomatic pressure for the next four years. So any Strangelove in the administration must act fast if he wants to make sure that Iran receives its fair share of timely shock and awe. In this diary, I want to explore whether this is likely to happen in the waning months of the Bush presidency.

Here we go, again!

CNN just reported.

At a press conference with German chancellor Merkel, Bush said that he has

‘Not ruled out military options’

This thing has been brewing, I mean we all know what's gonna happen here, but I'm stunned at the passivity, we seem to be accepting this as an 'inevitability'.

I know, I shouldn't read anything into those recent Air Force sackings, I mean the guys nearly nuked the nation which I guess is sufficient grounds for dismissal. But, I just can't help thinking that it all conveniently fits into some grand plot to attack Didyoueatmydinnerdad and the good people of Iran.

As everyone knows, Hillaryis44 is a pro-Clinton blog wherein comments are closely moderated. Comments that don't echo Hillary's talking points simply do not appear on the web site, period.

So why is it that these same moderators chose not to similarly censor an explicit call for violence at the upcoming meeting of the DNC's Rules & Bylaws Committee?

"I HOPE HILLARY DOES NOT GIVE IN. BLOW IT UP IF SHE HAVE TO."

There has been talk of boycotting advertisers of ABC's debate of April 16, 2008. Always a thorny subject, because without the advertiser explaining how their ad landed in a given time slot, because of the way the debates are scheduled, they may or may not have known their ad would be seeing 11 Million bodies who may not even be their potential customers. But in any case, the ads were there. We saw them. And they've become part of the outpouring of anger or adulation.

Avoiding Disney is harder for those with children than for those without. "Desperate Housewives," as an example of ABC Television, has not recovered from the writer's strike. ABC would be tempted to claim that issue for a few more weeks of ratings declines. "Grey's Anatomy" would be another issue.

So what did we see?

Everyone probably heard by now about the "small" bomb that went off in Times Sqare, New York yesterday. Well, today they are reporting that "letters were received by Congressional staffers with photos of the military center "before it was bombed" and claiming "We did it."

Well, what really scares me is when you think of this story in the context of this editorial in Common Dreams.

Follow me after the fold...

This us from The BBC: Small bomb hits NY's Times Square.  And this is from the AP: Commander warns of al-Qaida threat to US.  I have become very cynical about this terror fear mongering.  Clearly, we are in for lots more of it and the press will gush.  The Times Square bombing may be a domestic terrorist.  Lots of folk are stressed out by the failure of congressional leadership to deal with anything.  It was pretty much this level of frustration that made some in the Vietnam War era begin to discuss harsh means of protest.  Look below the fold for what transpired today.

Stop perpetuating "Palestinian" Islamists' orchestrated self made fake "victimhood"!

It's not only unfair but it's even dangerous to swallow their propaganda and "agree" with their: "we are the victims" culture.

MSNBC is reporting twin bomb blasts in Karachi, Pakistan, near the convoy in which former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was traveling.  There are apparently injuries on the scene, but no word as yet as to whether Bhutto herself was injured in the explosions.

Bhutto was the democratically-elected leader of Pakistan before she was deposed and forced into exile.  She returned to Pakistan today, vowing to end military rule in Pakistan.

Some biographical data on Bhutto.

There are several stories coming up right now about Turkey making incursions into Northern Iraq.

The BBC is reporting that here that Turkey is threatening raids on the Northern Iraq.

The AP is reporting here that it bombed a group of Turkish insurgents.

CNN is reporting here that Turkey is bombing suspected Kurdish rebels.

Whichever source is the most accurate, this is bad news. They have attacked the Kurds before, but in 1997.

This is not a good sign for stability in the region.

Fox News got the message and is on board for the campaign to set the groundwork for an attack on Iran. I am quoting from U.S. officials begin crafting Iran bombing plan

A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime, FOX News confirmed Tuesday.

All right, start by blaming the Germans! Old Europe, you know.

   I'm sure we all remember in the days following 9/11, when we had pulled together as a nation, President Bush saying the following:

Q    Do you want bin Laden dead?

    THE PRESIDENT:  I want justice.  There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, "Wanted: Dead or Alive."

snip

Q    Are you saying you want him dead or alive, sir?  Can I interpret --

    THE PRESIDENT:  I just remember, all I'm doing is remembering when I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the old west, a wanted poster.  It said:  "Wanted, Dead or Alive."  All I want and America wants him brought to justice.  That's what we want.

Well, America still wants him brought to justice. It's been 6 years and you haven't had a solid lead on him in over 3 years. So you can only imagine how discouraging it was to hear this:

Just some thoughts on Georgie-boys incredible Viet Nam speech...follow on true believer....

   At least 200 people were killed late tuesday outside of Mosul. Four truck bombs exploded killing at least 200 and wounding around 300 outside of Mosul in northern Iraq near Syria. They were members the Kurdish Yazidi religious minority.

Let me start off by saying it has taken me all day to decide to write this diary. When I first read it this morning it was done through a veil of tears. I dropped a couple comments over the day on this , hoping someone else would write about it, but it didn't happen. I can understand why no one wanted to write about it either.

In yesterdays Salon is a article titled When is an accidental civilian death not an accident?. The title is a bit misleading, since these are not accidents, no way, no how. The polite term used now-a-days is Collateral Damage. I call it Murder by the numbers, and you should soon understand why.

"The magic number was 30," said Marc Garlasco, who was the Pentagon's chief of high-value targeting at the start of the war. "That means that if you hit 30 as the anticipated number of civilians killed, the airstrike had to go to Rumsfeld or Bush personally to sign off." If the expected number of civilian deaths was less than 30, however, neither the president nor the secretary of defense needed to know.

"It may be that US administrations would have been no less willing to release their bombs and missiles on white noncombatant populations (as was the case with Germany in World War II); but it can at least be said that, for the past half-century-plus, air power has functionally acted as an armed form of racism, that the sense of "their lives" as cheaper, even if seldom spoken aloud, has made it easier to use the helicopter, the bomber, the Hellfire-missile-armed Predator drone. The fact is that air war always cheapens human life. After all, from the heights, if seen at all, people must have something of the appearance of scurrying insects."  – Tom Engelhardt

I admit that I'm reeling since reading the reports that two of the five suspects arrested in the United Kingdom in connection with the incidents in London and Scotland this week-end are medical doctors. This according to a report on MSNBC.com.

British security sources tell NBC News that two of the five suspects in custody in connection with three recent terror incidents in Scotland and London are medical doctors and one may have assembled the bombs.

Anybody out there who, like me, is approaching fifty can recall that the UK has been the target of terror attacks for over a third of a century. Was there ever a time when the reaction here to these events ever came close to approaching the order of screeching magnitude we see today over what amounts to...

...a couple of duds?

Between 1973 and 2001, in London alone, there were some pretty spectacularly well coordinated and executed attacks, including an attempt that nearly took out Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher...