WASHINGTON — Recognizing the U.S. can neither win in Afghanistan nor succeed more broadly against al-Qaida without Pakistan’s cooperation, President Barack Obama’s war council is weighing a new role for Pakistan in the 8-year-old struggle in the region.

And you got to love how we’re so eager to “fix” Iraq and Afghanistan but we won’t touch Pakistan…which is where Osama is and which still has an al-Qaida-supporting government.

Reporting from Washington — The Supreme Court debated today whether the government can maintain a cross in a national preserve to honor fallen soldiers or whether an official display of this Christian symbol violates the 1st Amendment’s ban on an establishment of religion.

Yes. It does.

But the justices spent most of the hour mired in a side dispute over whether Congress solved the constitutional problem by transferring the land under the cross to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

No. It didn’t.

At issue was cross that sits atop Sunrise Rock in a remote part of the Mojave National Preserve in California, not far from the border with Nevada.

“At issue was cross…”? Two things, “Los Angeles Times,” don’t ask stupid questions and proofread before you publish.

A day after soliciting the views of congressional leaders, President Obama is convening top national security officials Wednesday afternoon for a strategy session on Afghanistan and Pakistan amid escalating U.S. casualties in Afghanistan and signs of declining public support for the war there.

Maybe this time America will do what the UN advises!

BBC News sums up a speech by southern Sudan’s leader in their article’s first sentence: “The leader of southern Sudan says the country is at a “historic crossroads”, as it gears up for a national vote and a secession referendum for the south.” The story is buried somewhat in the Africa section. It isn’t mentioned on the front page. Iran dominates the headlines today. Merkel is mentioned on the front page as well. Even the Roman Polanski story is getting more attention.
VOA News interestingly leaves the “historic crossroads” quote out. The lead instead paraphrases: “The President of the semi-autonomous Southern Sudan has reportedly said that there is a real chance the results of the 2011 referendum on the future of South Sudan will lead to secession from the north.” This is the top story in the Africa section and under the African section of the front page.

Israel’s PM also has strong words for Ahmadinejad…

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday spoke before the United Nations General Assembly, calling to task the nations of the world on the international body’s responsibility and criticizing them for not standing up to it.

“The UN was founded after the carnage of World War II,” Netanyahu said, adding that the organization was “charged with preventing the reoccurrence of such horrendous events.

“Nothing has impeded” the work of the UN, he said, “more than the systematic assault on the truth.

“Yesterday the president of Iran stood at this podium spewing anti-Semitic rants… Just a few days earlier he claimed the Holocaust is a lie.

“Last month I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee,” Netanyahu recalled a visit to the pastoral villa, where over just a few hours on January 20 1942 the Nazis devised the Final Solution – the decision to exterminate the Jews from Europe.

Netanyahu then dramatically showed a facsimile copy of Final Solution documents drafted in Wannsee.

“Is this protocol a lie?” he asked. “Is the German government lying?”

“The day before I was in Wannsee,” Netanyahu continued, “I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

“These plans I now hold in my hand,” he said, as he was showing the worn-out blueprints to the assembly. “They contain a signature by Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s deputy.

“Are these plans of the camp where one million Jews were murdered a lie too?” he asked.

Netanyahu then turned to attacking Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying “Yesterday, the man who called the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. For those who refused to come, and those who left in protest – I commend you, you stood up for moral clarity.

“But for those who stayed – I say on behalf of the Jewish people, my people and decent people everywhere – have you no shame? No decency? What a disgrace, what a mockery of the charter of the UN.”

Netanyahu then told the assembly “perhaps some of you think that this man and his regime threaten only the Jews – well, if you think that – you’re wrong, dead wrong.

“In the past 30 years, this fanaticism spread across the globe with a murderous violence that knows no bounds,” he said, noting that Islamic terrorism hurt Muslims, Christian and Hindus as well as Jews.

“Wherever they can,” the prime minister said of Islamic fanatics, “they enforce a backward system of government.” He called the struggle between the modern world and extremist Islamism a struggle between “the 21st Century and the 9th Century.”

But, he noted, “Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And our future promises magnificent bounties of hope.”

Naming some of the technological achievements of the last hundred years, Netanyahu finished “We will find an alternative to fossil fuel, and yes, we will clean up the planet. But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history can be reversed” for a lengthy period of time, he warned.

“This is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and weapons of mass destruction.”

“Is the UN up to that?” Netanyahu asked. “Will the international community stand up to the despotism of a government against its own people?” he asked, referring to the recent elections in Iran. “The jury is still out on the UN. Recent signs are not encouraging.”

The prime minister then went on to criticize the recently published UN-commissioned report claiming both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in January.

“Not one UN resolution was passed condemning Hamas rocket attacks on Israel,” Netanyahu said, “We heard nothing, absolutely nothing from the UN Human Rights Council.”

Netanyahu went on to describe the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, telling the UN General Assembly that “Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza, uprooting over 8,000 Israelis from their homes… because many in Israel believed that this would get peace.”

But Israel didn’t get peace, Netanyahu said, “Instead we got an Iranian-backed terror base 50 miles from Tel Aviv, and life in the Israeli towns and cities near Gaza became nothing less than a nightmare. Hamas attacks increased ten-fold after we withdrew, and again, the UN was silent, absolutely silent.”

The prime minister told the assembly that “after eight years of unremitting assault Israel was forced to respond,” and said the only other example in history was the German bombing of British cities in WWII, to which the allies responded by leveling German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.

“I’m not passing judgment,” Netanyahu stressed, “I’m stating a fact that is the product of decisions of just and great leaders fighting an evil enemy,” he said.

“Faced with an enemy committing double war crimes – firing at civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to carry out surgical attacks on terrorists, not an easy task when fighting squads in a densely populated area,” he said.

“Israel tried to minimize civilian casualties…We dropped countless flyers over Gazans’ homes, sent text messages to Palestinian residents, made cellular phone calls urging them to vacate, to leave,” the prime minister said, stating that “never has a country gone to such length to remove the enemy’s civilian population away from harm’s way.”

Netanyahu went on to slam the Goldstone report, saying that “the UN Human Rights Council decided to condemn Israel, we were morally hanged, given an unfair trial to boot… What a perversion of truth and justice.”

A day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israeli speech at the UN General Assembly, President Shimon Peres said Thursday that the hard-line leader was the antithesis of moral.

Speaking to 1,000 students at the Kfar Hayarok school in central Israel, Peres said, “If there’s anyone who is the antithesis of moral and of the Jewish people it’s the Iranian leader Ahmadinejad.”

So one president calls another the most evil person in the universe. And it still doesn’t get as much attention as Obama calling Kanye a jackass. Wow.