Quickhits - Iraq and Afghanistan

I don't want to minimize the peoples' lives here with the language I use, but it seems apparent that the violence in Iraq is starting to "tick up." A seeming increase in attacks over the last week, at least 9 Americans killed this week, and two more bombings today, a carbomb near a government office in Mosul, 18 killed, and a suicide bomber west of Baghdad targeting Sunni sheiks working with the US, 12 killed.

(NYTimes) The Afghani government directly states that the Pakistanis, in the form of the ISI, were directly involved in the recent assassination attempt against Hamid Karzai. (It's getting pretty diplomatically hot again. Remember when Bush had to bring Karzai and Musharraf to the White House two years ago?)