Terror and Sports

The news out of London is discouraging these days. It seemed that Tony Blair was doing everything right after the July 7 bombings; he reached out to Muslims, he made a distinction between mainstream Islam and fundamentalist militants, and he behaved more like an adult than Bush did on 9/11 (remember when he kept reading "My Pet Goat" at that elementary school in Florida?). Then there were attempted copycat bombings this past Thursday, and London police shot a suspect to death - a common occurrence in New York, alas, but something that almost never happens in London - and it turned out to be an innocent bystander. The city seems to be even more on edge than New York was nearly four years ago, and New York had more than just a bombing or two. It lost two seemingly indestructible skyscrapers to ten commandos wielding knives and box cutters.

Some good news is needed today, and two good stories come from the world of sports. The first, of course, is that Lance Armstrong won his seventh Tour de France and now retires undefeated. The second is that the U.S. men's soccer team won the North American Gold Cup, putting them in serious contention for next years's World Cup tournament.