This headline is both tough and inspiring to read: “Protecting Civilians Delays Afghan Offensive.”

MARJAH, Afghanistan—As Capt. Anthony Zinni monitored a live video feed from a Predator drone circling overhead, he spotted four men planting a booby trap in the middle of the road here.

For Capt. Zinni, one of the officers responsible for approving airstrikes in the nine-day-old battle for Marjah, it seemed like an easy call: The men were digging a hole alongside a road where a Marine supply convoy was scheduled to pass within hours. But just as he was about to give the order to strike, Capt. Zinni spotted even-smaller white figures on the video running along the path south of the canal.

Children. Maybe 50 feet from the men planting the booby trap. “It’s not a good shot,” Capt. Zinni said, ordering the Predator drone to delay the strike. “It’s not a good shot.”

The 45 minutes that followed help illustrate why it is taking coalition forces so long to secure this hotly contested part of Afghanistan.

Read the whole thing and remember: Americans do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties.  Our enemies use them as human shields.

From Diggs: “I misspoke at a recent event. Talking about Nancy Pelosi’s excessive travel expenses, I included some incorrect information about the specific type of plane she uses and exactly how much taxpayer money she’s been spending. She uses luxury Gulfstream jets, not the converted 757’s, and she racked up $2.1 million in travel costs over two years. As you can see, the facts stand on their own as objectionable to taxpayers, and no malice was intended on my part. But my parents told me that when you screw up, you admit it. I screwed up the numbers, and for that I apologize.”

From Eric Cantor:

We picked up a major Taliban leader in Pakistan last week.  The NYT describes him:

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Here’s an interesting question: Now that the Obama administration has tied the hands of American interrogators, what happens when we pick up a high-value individual?

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

The Obama administration has been moralizing about the terrible techniques used by the Bush administration, but then they hand this guy over to the Pakistanis?

Exit question: If you were a prisoner, would you rather be interrogated by Bush’s CIA or Obama’s Pakistani intelligence officials?

Here’s Fort Collins-based blogger Ken Davenport:

According to Joe Biden, the success in Iraq will be one of the “great achievements of this administration”.

Which administration is that?  The one made up of Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others who vociferously and adamantly OPPOSED the 2007 surge, courageously ordered by George W. Bush, that saved Iraq from becoming a damaging failure to American foreign policy?

The very same surge that Biden, Obama and their minions said would certainly fail?

Is this the Joe Biden who now trumpets the success of the new unified democratic government in Iraq? The one who wanted to divide the country into three autonomous zones because he was convinced it could never be governed centrally?

That one?

Wow.  Takes a lot of gumption and a great deal of fantasy to sell this one with a straight face.

America’s last surviving veteran from World War I is 109.

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