Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Bloodshed in Baghdad: “Two bombs exploded hours apart Friday in a central Baghdad pet market and a police checkpoint in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing 26 people and wounding dozens, officials said…. The blast in the capital’s popular weekly al-Ghazl animal bazaar occurred just before 9 a.m., shattering the festive atmosphere as people strolled past the stalls. At least 13 people were killed and nearly 60 wounded, including four policemen, according to police and hospital officials. About 1:30 p.m. in Mosul, a suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint, killing three policemen and 10 civilians, said police Brig. Gen. Mohammed al-Wakaa.”
* Important follow-up on the troops’ bonuses story: “Despite the Pittsburgh TV station KDKA citing “thousands” of wounded soldiers being asked to return their recruitment bonuses, it’s unclear how many actually were, according to Army spokesman Paul Boyce. Boyce says he has personally been in touch with the station’s reporters as part of the Army’s efforts to get to the bottom of the bonus-recoupment story, and he’s been able to determine that 300 soldiers were asked to send back part or all of their battlefield pay — not their bonuses. So far, the Army attributes the mistake to an insufficient number of finance clerks at some hospitals where wounded soldiers were admitted in 2004 and 2005, resulting in paperwork mix-ups.”
* E. J. Dionne Jr. has some important praise for Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D): “Imagine a place where the leading politician pokes fun at those who ‘regard all taxes as a pestilence, a plague or a disease.’ Imagine the same politician saying: ‘Not one of us wants to pay more in taxes. But you know what we want even less? What we want even less is to leave our country to our kids in a worsened condition.’ And imagine a place where other politicians are grown-ups and decide that closing budget deficits requires a mix of tax increases and spending cuts.” Regrettably, it’s not DC, it’s Maryland, where O’Malley took office and inherited a $1.7 billion budget deficit from his Republican predecessor.
* What did the Bush administration’s diplomats know about martial law in Pakistan, and when did they know it: “As his government battled democracy protesters and an Islamist insurgency, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf startled his countrymen this month by imposing emergency rule and jailing thousands of opponents. The move wasn’t a surprise to the U.S. In the days before the Nov. 3 announcement, the general’s aides and advisers forewarned U.S. diplomats in a series of meetings in Islamabad, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials. One of Gen. Musharraf’s closest advisers said U.S. criticism was muted, which some senior Pakistanis interpreted as a sign they could proceed.”
* Conservative activists are tired of waiting for courts to end existing reproductive rights, so they’re considering an alternative strategy: “Antiabortion activists in several states are promoting constitutional amendments that would define life as beginning at conception, which could effectively outlaw all abortions and some birth control methods…. Some activists say they are fed up with incremental steps — and are not interested in waiting years, or possibly decades, for a more conservative court to revisit Roe. Instead, they are out to change the legal status of embryos [to ‘personhood’] in hopes of forcing the Supreme Court to ban abortion.” The strategy would also end up banning emergency contraception for rape victims.
* Afghanistan slides a little further backwards: “According to a new report, ‘The conflict in Afghanistan has reached ‘crisis proportions,’ with the resurgent Taliban present in more than half the country and closing in on Kabul.’ A separate Oxfam report states that spending on aid for Afghans is only a tiny fraction of military expenditure: ‘As in Iraq, too much aid is absorbed by profits of companies and subcontractors, on non-Afghan resources and on high expatriate salaries and living costs,’ said the report. ‘Each full-time expatriate consultant costs up to half a million dollars a year.'”
* And finally, it’s holiday shopping time, and it can be difficult to find the perfect gift for that special someone. Well, I know just the thing for the Donald Rumsfeld fan on your list:
It’s a 12-inch “Rummy” doll that looks vaguely like him and features bits of his historic news conferences that you can play just by pressing a little button on the back of his coat.
Yes, you can listen to 28 of former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s greatest displays of impeccable logic:
* “What they do with themselves is up to them, and what the people around them do with them is up to the people around them.”
* “There are known knowns, there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns, that is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns, there are things we do not know we don’t know, and each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.”
* “We have a saying in America: If you’re in a hole, stop digging. . . . I’m not sure I should have said that.”
* “I suspect some of these dead-enders will be down there shooting people and doing that type of thing.”
* “I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.”
* “I believe what I said yesterday. I don’t know what I said, but I know what I think, and I assume that’s what I said.”
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.