Welcome to the World Tonight

Omar, in Iraq the Model:

Arthur Chrenkoff has another round up of good news from Afghanistan. I can't stop feeling amazed whenever I see the enormous effort Arthur puts in his blog trying to show some of the untold news about Iraq and Afghanistan, and I keep wondering, "On who's payroll is he?! Poor "anti-war" bloggers, who toil just for the sake of truth living only on wine and french bread.

First: appreciate the subtlety of Omar's wry humor, that's satire worthy of Swift from a man from a culture most likely far from yours for whom English is a second language. Your reading of such a thing from such a source would have been impossible a few short months ago when neither the technology nor the freedom were available to him.

Then ponder this: An American GI in Iraq just linked to and commented about an Iraqi citizen, who was linking and commenting on a post from an ex-pat from Poland now living in Australia and providing information to the world on the situation in Afghanistan.

What does it all mean? That's entirely up to you.

Dismiss such things as trivial if you wish, but most who read these words likely already understand the enormous potential of blogs. Others see all this as evil, but then many of our ancient ancestors were likely anti-fire. More recently there were those who opposed Gutenberg's light in the darkness.

Here, let me fuel the fire, for clearly the this day the Knights Templar ride:

Agents Blackfive and Grim report from the East Coast (Harvard and DC, respectively).

And for the latest from our agents in California, here's Roger and Chap.

For good measure, here's international-man-of-mystery Wretchard.

Extreme heat? No - just a nice warm glow.