More On The Ground

news.scotsman.com, July 28
Headline: A long war on terror draws to a close at last
Neil Griffiths, writing about deployment to Northern Ireland:
The big fear for us teenage soldiers on the ground was that we could be shot at any moment and our pulses steadily increased as tension grew.

Lebanon Daily Star online , July 26
A few cinematic facts on the ground about Palestine
Hamid Dabashi's "Dreams of a Nation" is vital, if uneven, reading for students of the region's cinema
By Jim Quilty
Daily Star staff

iol.co.za, july 28 (south african news Web site) (last paragraph)
Headline: We cannot rely on SA leader alone: Zim

Harare - A faction of Zimbabwe's divided opposition said on Saturday that the country could not wait for outsiders to liberate them from on-going political and economic problems, an official said.

Arthur Mutambara, leader of the breakaway faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, told a news conference that although the MDC leadership had resolved to engage Southern African Development Community mediation efforts there was a need for home-grown solutions.

"More significantly, the council noted that Zimbabweans cannot outsource their emancipation and liberation to foreigners," Mutambara said after a meeting of his governing national council here.

"We must not be solely dependent on the (South African President Thabo) Mbeki initiative. We must have an alternative programme of action on the ground that seeks to achieve conditions for free and fair elections."

wsj online, july 28
General Petraeus Needs Time
By PETER WEHNER
July 28, 2007; Page A9
'This [Iraq] war is lost," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has stated emphatically and without qualification. "There's simply no evidence that the escalation is working," he said recently. It requires "blind hope, blind trust" to believe in progress of any sort.

Sen. Reid is now in the position of having to deny facts on the ground in order to sustain his bleak judgments. And his job is getting more difficult all the time.