I have often recommended that NYT Middle East reporter, John Burns (who knows no Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, or Turkish but I have it on good authority that he has eaten a falafil sandwich or two which is the necessary qualification to report on the Middle East in US media) take a job as a spokesperson for the Pentagon. I am willing to write a glowing letter of recommendation on his behalf. This is what he writes today: "The fiercest fighting, apart from Najaf, appeared to have been in Kut, a city about 150 miles south of Baghdad that was briefly taken over by Mr. Sadr's fighters in the spring. According to Qassim al-Mayahi, the head of al-Zahra hospital, 84 people were killed and more than 170 wounded, many of them civilians, in fighting that began with rebel attacks on government buildings on Wednesday." He leaves out that most of the civilians who died in AlKut (based on ME media and hospital sources) were killed after US fighter jets bombed the city.