US troops carrying out an offensive against resurgent Taliban guerillas fought off an attack on their mountaintop camp in Helmand province's remote Baghran Valley today. Later, US warplanes were called in to bomb a Taliban hideout. An A-10 Warthog bomber strafed the position before a B-1 bomber dropped a 2,000 pound bomb. Local residents said an elderly couple was killed in the air raid.

The worst environmental practices of the Saddam dictatorship (themselves a result of sanctions) are being revived under US occupation in Iraq's oil industry. Thank goodness this report by James Glanz made the front page of the New York Times yesterday (online at Kurdish Aspect). But will it make any difference? In its inimitably annoying way, the Times buried some of the most salient facts deep in the story, or left them out completely. We have added emphasis and annotation.

On June 14, Assistant Secretary for ICE Julie Myers announced that ICE agents had apprehended 2,179 immigrants in a nationwide sweep between May 26 and June 13. Virtually every ICE field office in the US took part in "Operation Return to Sender," in collaboration with state and local law enforcement agencies. About half of the arrested immigrants had prior criminal records, and 367 were described by ICE as "members or associates of violent street gangs" (presumably without criminal records). Another 640 of the arrested immigrants were "fugitives" who had ignored final orders of removal issued by an immigration judge. The remaining arrestees were immigration status violators picked up during the raids. Most were arrested on administrative immigration violations and were placed in removal proceedings; ICE said on June 14 that 829 of them had already been removed. ICE agents also arrested 121 people on federal criminal charges ranging from felony re-entry after deportation to "illegal alien in possession of a firearm." (ICE News Release, June 14)

This man did not die in vain. He was a necessary sacrifice, just like the 2,500 servicemen in Iraq. If there is any rethinking whatsoever of our way of life predicated on profligate fossil fuel consumption, the terrorists win. From the New York Daily News, June 19:

Driver fixing bus killed as athletes watch

A group of Long Island Special Olympics athletes watched in horror yesterday as one of their drivers was killed when a truck slammed into their bus, which was stopped on the shoulder of the New York State Thruway, police said.

Another New York Times op-ed piece, "Dealing With the Devil in Darfur" by Julie Flint (IHT, June 17), warns of US support for Minni Arcua Minnawi, leader of the ethnic Zaghawa faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), who seems bent on his own campaign of ethnic cleansing. Minnawi's SLA faction even has its own imprisoned dissident, Suliman Gamous. It is predictable that the US has wound up backing the most reactionary faction of the SLA. But Flint, calling for a seat at the peace table for Darfur's Arabs (now officially represented by Sudan's government), has nothing to say about Darfur's majority Fur ethnicity, the Black African people who have now apparently been betrayed by the dominant faction of the SLA. There is the Fur-led SLA faction, as well as the rival (and smaller) Justice & Equality Movement (JEM). But do they speak for the Fur any more than Khartuom speaks for the Darfur Arabs?

Nepal's Maoist rebels agreed June 16 to lay down arms and join the government, ending the 10-year guerilla insurgency. The accord, announced following a daylong meeting between Maoist leader Prachanda ("the fierce one") and interim prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, calls for the elected Parliament to be dissolved pending a new constitution and for the guerillas to dismantle their parallel government in the countryside. The guerillas will not disarm until after until after a vote is held for a constituent assembly to draft the new constitution. As interim measures, hundreds of guerilla fighters have been released from prison, the word "royal" has been officially dropped from the name for the country's armed forces, and Nepal (heretofore the world's only Hindu kingdom) has been declared a secular nation. Prachanda is now on a national tour, holding meetings with the leaders of the guerilla "Peoples' Governments" and urging them to join the official political system. (Nepal News, June 18)

It was nice to see this story on the front page of the New York Times, Metro Section June 14. But the Times fails to grasp that this parking lot must be built. It is a moral imperative so that 2,500 US servicemen in Iraq will not have died in vain.

Hospital's Garden of Sobriety May Sprout Rows of Cars

When Charles Flax talks about the small garden tucked just behind the Bellevue Hospital Center, it becomes clear that the space is more than a few vegetable beds and a tool shed.

It is one place where, Mr. Flax, 60, said, he has restored his dignity. "You're working from the ground up with people who respect you, who share knowledge with you, and they trust you," Mr. Flax said. "You're with people who believe in growth."

The US military has flown in two forensic specialists to examine the body of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "to see how he actually died," a US general said. The autopsy was ordered after it was made public that he survived an air strike June 7 that killed five others, including a man identified as his spiritual adviser, Sheik Abdul-Rahman. (Irish Examiner, June 10) Meanwhile, Iraqi eyewitnesses accused the US forces of having beaten to death the badly-injured al-Qaeda leader after he survived the air strike on his hideout, an accusation immediately denied by the US. (Islam Online, June 11)

Since then, statements have been published on Islamist Web sites naming Abu Hamza al-Muhajer as the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Analysts suggested that al-Muhajer, meaning "the immigrant" in Arabic, is a foreigner like the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi. US military officials say they're convinced al-Muhajer is actually Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian associate of al-Zarqawi who has trained in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda operational leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. (CNN, June 14)