Domestic spying by military?

Two articles worth reading: Haroon Siddiqui has a fair and well-balanced article in the Ideas section of the Sunday, 20 August Toronto Star entitled The Muslim Malaise George Soros’ article in the Wall Street Journal entitled A Self-Defeating War is also worthwhile and is published at the TPM Cafe. Here are some excerpts: “The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies…Unfortunately, the “war on terror” metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder.…

It seems that the number excludes Fallujah, and the count may actually be closer to 200,000 if Fallujah is included…. Iraq Body Count all of a sudden looks like a conservative website telling us how wonderful things are in Iraq.

I have always been uncomfortable around Muslim women wearing the full veil or Burqa.  Growing up in Karachi,  I only knew one woman who wore a full veil – "Apaa" my Urdu and Quran teacher.  I just never encountered in my 12 years there many women who wore a veil.  Thus, now, it is so surprising for me to see Muslim women veiled in Western countries. On the one hand – the feminist in me wants to shake them up and say: "Why? Oh Why? are you doing this?" – but then the other feminist says: "Its a free world…