Sure, when you’re desperate: It goes against religious taboos in Iraq to involve women in fighting, but three recent suicide bombings carried out by women could indicate insurgents are growing increasingly desperate. The female suicide attacks come as U.S.-led coalition forces are increasingly catching militants suspected of training women to become human bombs or finding evidence of efforts by al-Qaida in Iraq to recruit women, according to military records. With coalition

Increase your word-hoard, c/o Protein Wisdom!  Today’s special word: snarge (n.): “”Snarge…it’s what’s left after a bird hits an airplane, goes through an engine. There are no feathers or any other kind of remains of the bird left except blood, guts.” Bon appetit!

Via Memeorandum, some sad news from hilzoy at Obsidian Wings: Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G’Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July. Andy was a wonderful person: decent, honorable, generous, principled, courageous, sweet, and very funny. The world has a horrible hole in it that nothing can

I really had not planned on writing more on this subject, but the sheer number of extreme reactions — ranging from oozing Obamamania on the Left to the unwise bashing of Huckabee supporters  — has goaded me into it. Well, that and Byron York, who seems to believe that Iowa “wasn’t about infrastructure at all,” somehow overlooking Huckabee’s organized networks of evangelical conservative Christians, home-schoolers, and gun-rights groups.  You would think

In “The Big Picture(s),” I noted the case of Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi stringer working for the Associated Press with a history of taking staged photographs of Islamic terrorists, who was detained by the US military as a security threat in April 2006. In the last update to this story, an article that ran at Harper’s (and excerpted at Editor & Publisher)  smearing the US military was found to be authored by Scott Horton 

Courtesy of JD:

thanks to Serr8d!

Matthew Yglesias whines about preordained media coverage: Watching Chris Matthews, I just saw that Tim Russert has already booked John McCain as his featured interviewee for this Sunday. Republican presidential candidate who won the Iowa Caucuses? Well, sorry, you’re out of luck. It’s already been decided that the “real” story out of Iowa is McCain… Guess who Russert just had on last Sunday?

I saw a werewolf drinking a virgin Piña Colada outside the Kum and Go in West Des Moines. His hair was… “too perfect.”