Best thing about a long holiday weekend is that we can catch up on our reading. I urge you all to peruse the Diplomadic. You'll learn. Then Blackfive---not nearly as interesting since he got back to the states---links to a much too long series of photos from Fallujah . A scan will show you the huge number of mosques used as factories, storehouses for weapons, and hiding places; plus torture victims---all unreported, natch. Just to give you an idea

Mosques in Fallujah - 100
Mosques used as Fighting Positions / Weapons Caches - 60
Hospitals Used as Defensive Positions - 3
Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Factories - 11
Slaughter House/Torture Chambers - 3
Number of Major Weapons Storage Areas in the City - 203
Evidence of Foreign Fighter involvement - 2

Fallujah Urban Area Roughly 20 Sq Kilometers In Size
Average City Block = 100 X 200 Meters
Average Number of Fallujah City Blocks = 1000

3 out of every 5 Mosques had fighting positions – 60 total

653 total IEDs were found and detonated in Fallujah. The average number of IEDs found and/or detonated across Iraq per month from July to October was 772.

1 out of every 5 blocks had a weapons cache – 203 total.

Ukraine and Hannah Arendt---it looks like the big bully Russia is going to have to back down. Hannah Arendt, one of the great thinkers of our age--politically incorrect even to this day---wrote a long essay called "On Power" in which she observed the difference between power and (state) terror. Numbers are the real power, eventually. The guy with the gun eventually gets tired, the gun gets heavy, he needs recreation and so he lets his guard down. Exhaustion, corruption, spiritual emptiness gets the guy with the gun, finally. Russia is not only the guy with the gun, but the guy with the gun that has only three bullets in it and no sense of purpose other than pushing people around. Poland rising up to join the Ukraine is major news. Russia loses, again---still---and thank God (and the guts of the people) for that. Freedom rings and it's all our fault. One can also observe that a dictator (Putin) without an ideology---religion, communism, Islam----can't rally the numbers necessary to win these kinds of battles. Best website on Ukraine seems to be HERE. What they leave out is that Eastern Ukraine is Muslim and the west is Catholic (Greek Orthodox) and it was the east that voted for the dictator.