The Pittsburgh Public Schools will drop “public” from its name and adopt a new, standardized way of referring to its schools as part of a campaign to brighten and strengthen the district’s image.

For example, Schenley High School will be called Pittsburgh Schenley…

By dropping “public” from its name, Randall Taylor said, the district might be able to avoid the negative attitude often associated with public schools.

This is a great way to address the negative image associated with public schools: re-brand everything. Fixing the problem itself is much more in involved. And once the public realizes that Pittsburgh Schenley is just as bad as Schenley High School, you simply re-brand again to Schenley School of Pittsburgh. I personally think that’s an even more inspiring -positive image- name.

• Pittsburgh schools drop ‘public’ from name to boost image

Michael Yon has an eye-opening piece on his site MichaelYon-Online.com. It displays just how barbaric the enemy has become. The scary part is that NO ONE is picking this up in the media. How is it that we are fighting the most vicious enemy we have ever faced – and yet we here little if anything on these acts?

Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family. [emphasis added]

Michael Yon in addition to bringing us this little publicized tale, also offers a bit of striking commentary on Al Qaeda. He puts it so well, we had to reprint it here:

Like many things in Iraq, the question of whether or not the murderers were al Qaeda is flawed from beginning. Al Qaeda is not a union, it doesn’t issue passports. What is al Qaeda but the collection of people who claim to be al Qaeda? Those responsible for murdering and burying those bodies in al Ahamir (or al Hamira) had the markers of al Qaeda, the same al Qaeda that had boastfully installed itself as the shadow government of Baqubah. The al Qaeda who committed atrocities in Afghanistan, New York . . . the list is long. As for al Ahamir, the massacre “walks like a duck.” It happened in duck headquarters. The people here say the duck did it. The duck laughs.

• Baqubah Update: 05 July 2007