When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI two years ago, we pointed out that he had been the Vatican's pointman on dialogue with the "Traditionalist" schism that rejects the Vatican II reforms. Now it seems he may be ready to give the Traditionalists what they want—healing the breach with the schism, but making Catholicism more obscurantist and less appealing at a time when it is under assault from Islam and Protestantism (not, alas, from secularism and rationalism, as His Holiness seems to think). From AP, May 28:

Well said. Fortunately the Iraqwarit blog has liberated this text from the New York Times' elitist pay-per-view policy. From Paul Krugman's column, Memorial Day, May 28:

Trust and Betrayal
"In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war." That’s what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation’s history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness.

Colombia's lower house voted overwhelmingly May 23 to request President Alvaro Uribe "immediately remove for incompetence" Sergio Caramagna, head of the OAS peace mission in the country. Jose Castro Caycedo, the legislator who sponsored the resolution, told the Associated Press that paramilitaries made a mockery of the peace talks by "holding orgies on the negotiating table," excesses which he said Caramagna should have denounced.

New Delhi has rushed additional paramilitary forces to Assam following a bombing in Guwahati which left seven dead and 30 injured—apparently the work of the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). Days earlier, the ULFA warned that it would step up attacks on Hindi-speaking residents of the eastertn state to retaliate against the death of several of its cadres in the hands of security forces. (Indian Express, Udayavani, May 27)

A US delegation is headed for Kabul to persuade President Hamid Karzai to approve a program of glyphosate spraying over the opium-producing lands of southeast Afghanistan. The private contractor Dyncorp is to carry out the spraying in cooperation with a specially-trained Afghan force. The US is willing to negotiate, but makes clear it will not take glyphosate off the table. "There has to be a stick that goes with the carrot," said Thomas Schweich, State Department co-ordinator for counter-narcotics in Afghanistan. Eradication had to be a component of US policy, he emphasized.

Jakob Kellenberger, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said May 24 he was not optimistic about a breakthrough in talks with Iraqi officials to gain access to up to 20,000 held in the country's prisons. "We are still in negotiation about an agreement with them," Kellenberger told a news conference. Asked about the impasse, he replied: "I don't think that I am expressing extreme optimism."

Exiled Somali leaders in Eritrea issued a call to boycott a Mogadishu peace conference scheduled for next month, warning of further violence if it goes ahead. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, leader of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), and Sheikh Sharif Hassan Aden, a former Somali parliament speaker, released the joint statement in Asmara.

Interesting. A Pew survey finds that 87% of Muslim Americans polled (just some 1,000 out of the total 2 million-plus) condemn the practice of suicide bombings. But for those under 30, the 13% finding them sometimes justified doubles to 26%. So the lefty InterPress Service headline states: "Major Poll Finds U.S. Muslims Mostly Mainstream." The reactionary New York Post editorializes May 23 (all caps in original, of course): "TIME BOMBS IN OUR MIDST"