It seemed like another normal day. Hanadi, an attractive, 29-year-old lawyer set out like on Saturday like any other day. Only she didn’t go to the office this day. She went to the restaurant instead. And blew herself up, killing 19 people.
Why? Because she had witnessed Israeli troops kill her brother and cousin in June.
Regardless of how much high-browed rhetoric politicans offer on freedom and the end of terror, will there ever be any peace so long as violence remains public policy and revenge controls the human heart?

I received a handout which lists a few interesting statistics on poverty in Knoxville/Knox County.  I’m unsure of the source, but have no reason to doubt them:

• 12.3% of county residents live below the poverty level (for a family of four defined as an income of $18,100 or less).

• 21% of city residents live in poverty.

• 19.9% of county children live in poverty.

• 13.3% of country elderly live in poverty.

• 36.4% of employed county residents make less than $9.50/hour (the “livable” wage in this community).

• Of those living in poverty, the largest demographic group are adult females (36.5% of the total).

It’s unfortunate that so many people are struggling, particularly since that includes one out of five children.  Unfortunately, with the employment market as it is, I don’t see much improvement in these numbers anytime soon.

This New York Times story examines how the Bush administration overstated the capacity of the Iraqi oil fields to generate sufficient revenue to pay for the rebuilding of Iraq:

Bush administration officials announced earlier this year that Iraq’s oil revenues would be $20 billion to $30 billion a year, which added to the impression that the aftermath of the war would place a minimal burden on the United States. Mr. Bremer now estimates that Iraq’s total oil revenues from the last half of 2003 to 2005 will amount to $35 billion, running at a rate of about $14 billion a year.

These claims came despite the existence of a specially-commissioned “book-length report” by the Energy Infrastructure Planning Group “that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent.”
Exaggerated claims in the face of contrary pre-war intelligence. Does that sound familiar?
With respect to locating weapons of mass destruction, intelligence analysts had clear challenges which lent a little leeway to debate their findings. The components for biological weapons, for example, are small and can be easily transported. So there was a little room to argue their conclusions one way or the other.
But what grounds are there to ignore intelligence on Iraq’s oil capacity? Did the Bush administration think Saddam ran a systematic program to conceal the decrepit condition of his oil wells and pipelines? That Saddam erected false derricks to deceive the world into thinking he was producing more oil? The true condition of Iraq’s oil industry should have been ascertainable for those who wanted to get at the truth.
The more of this type thing I read, the more I’m convinced that the Bush administration’s pre-war rhetoric was crafted primarily to sell a war, not to present an honest picture of the reality of things in Iraq.

Brian Flemming lays out the extensive chronology of President Bush’s efforts to uncover who leaked Valerie Plum’s identity to the media.
Via Billmon.

Another suicide bombing:

At least 19 people were killed yesterday when a woman walked into a beachfront restaurant crowded with families in Haifa, on Israel’s north coast, and detonated explosives strapped to her body. Among the dead were at least three children.

And the familiar response:

Israeli gunships have fired at least two missiles at Palestinian targets in Gaza City and several more at a refugee camp. There is no word of any casualties but two houses were damaged.
The air strikes came hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber from the West Bank blew herself up in a crowded restaurant in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing at least 19 and wounding up to 55 others.

I’m pretty sure I understand the motives and targeting of the suicide bombers–they just look for soft targets where they can render maximum physical and psychological damage.
But what of these Israeli strikes? What’s behind their targeting? They are categorically described as retaliatory strikes, but retaliation against who? Surely the Israelis cannot, in the span of a few hours, identify and locate the players directly responsible for the immediate bombing. So how do they single out the people they target? Do they have a list of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members which they check off whenever they want to retaliate for a bombing? If that’s the case it seems they might not wait until another attack to move against the suspected militants.