I am the first to say that things in Iraq are worse today than they should be, indeed than they would have been if we had sent in more troops and acted more aggressively.

But the children�s prison is empty. The mass graves are no longer being dug. Kurds and Shiites no longer face mass destruction. Fathers don�t have to fear some thug dragging their daughters off to Uday�s rape rooms. Thanks to the blood shed by American soldiers, the Iraqis have the chance to seize freedom as their own -- a chance Saddam never would have given them.

And the Washington Post thinks that this sacrifice is a form of TORTURE against the people of Iraq? It's another case of "No good deed goes unpunished."

G&V are almost to 1000 caches and they are catching us. At the current rate both teams are finding caches, they will catch us in early August at 1700+ caches.

Can we let that happen? Well, yeah, probably, but I'd like to make it later on. So today I loaded up a gazillion caches in the south area. This includes a premium cache called "Spike and Ivy Walk on the Wild Side" and I read the directions... he talks about a park that's only used once a year. Why yes, and I was there last Saturday, in fact!

We found the one that was placed (and found, grumble) yesterday right near here. It had a travel bug. I have to start getting a few of these to trade (and maybe I should use my gift certificate from Monica to buy some more, too) at the party in Novato on the 6th. Then we went down to the Old City Cemetery and found our first premium cache. If I got shamed into paying, we should get something from it, I imagine, and I can't figure out the whole "Pocket Query" thingie.

On down near the Zoo where we looked and looked for one and couldn't find it. Then we drove to a different spot and found a big cache with lots of stuffed animals in it. (It's called "Wild Things," which I think is clever.) Then there's a multi at the golf course in Land Park where the Zoo is. It's called "A Hole in One, Twice" to honor one cacher who managed two holes-in-one in one game. The first stage is a golfball with coordinates on it, in the hole of a tree, and it was soppy and slimy for Rich to reach out. The second stage is much lower and easier.

I was getting tired here, though I'm not sure why. I didn't think it would be a good idea to look for the travel bug cache that's so hard for everyone to find, but Rich wanted to try it. We must have rooted around in that grove of trees for half an hour, with no luck. Well, then, we had to finish with a find, so there was a micro near a cash store ("Cash Cache") that Rich easily picked up.

OK, that's 6. Our average over the last 30 days is 2.7, and G&V are at 5/day. If we could keep this up, we'd hold them at bay, but I doubt we'll go out tomorrow, and Friday Rich has an all-day event with a group of women, so they'll catch us, maybe even before August.

The Kings lost a heartbreaker, and the Sharks lost. Grumph. We're going to the Rivercats game tomorrow... and with the kind of luck I've had all year with my teams, the 'cats will probably lose.

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Safire: Sarin, what Sarin?:

This equates sleep deprivation with life deprivation, illegal individual humiliation with official mass murder. We flagellate ourselves for mistreatment by a few of our guards, who will be punished; he delightedly oversaw the shoveling of 300,000 innocent Iraqis into unmarked graves. Iraqis know the difference.

Unrequited Narcissism on gas prices:

Having to pay an extra fifty cents a gallon right around vacation season is not a national emergency. Paying an extra fifty cents a gallon for heating oil in the dead of winter might be, though.

A comment at Polipundit:

You know, Lorie suggests highlighting the French looking guy's opposition to ANWR drilling- One of the Liberal arguments against ANWR has been "it would take 10 years to come on line".

It might be good to highlight Kerry's incredible lack of Foresight and inability to plan for the future by voting down ANWR proposals in the late eighties and early nineties.

Glenn on the news.

Rand Simburg on NASA. I hope they listen to him. Being bloated bureaucrats, though, they probably can't.

Neil Boortz:

Downplay the good, hammer the bad. Run the Abu Ghraib story on the front page for three weeks. Bury the Nick Berg story after one day. Ignore the Sarin and mustard gas finds. If the story will help Bush, bury it. If it will hurt Bush, run it day after day.

One of Glenn's readers:

Every morning the clock radio wakes me up to Prison Abuse 24/7 (NPR). This morning I realized the major reoccurring theme is that the prisoners were made to wear women's underwear or go naked. I suspect that the American Public now has the image of Iraqi thugs in pink thongs firmly imbedded in their minds and the rest of the story (if there is any) is unheard. Besides, most Americans say to themselves, if the Iraqis can't take that, they are really wusses. This will be noted as another Big Media overhype failure. They will be wondering, again, why they can't get traction against Bush.

Garry Kasparov, Stop the Moral Equivalence.

Meanwhile, Iraq Good News Watch, and A conversation with a taxi driver, and a letter from an American soldier (who definitely cannot spell.) Iraqis on the prison. I don't know if I think it's the Iraqis who are wusses, but I definitely think the American Big Media are!