IRAQ WILL ALWAYS BE IRAQ: September was the deadliest month in Iraq for the last two years.

THE INDISPENSABLE ELI LAKE on the intel behind Obama’s Libya line.

WHO SAYS JEWS AND MUSLIMS CAN’T GET ALONG? Azerbaijan, a Muslim country that was once part of the Persian Empire, may be planning to help the Israelis strike Iranian nuclear weapons facilities.

TOO BAD THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN: Gallup surveyed Libyan public opinion a few months ago and found that 95 percent of respondents wanted the country’s militias disarmed at once.

ANOTHER STATE DEPARTMENT SCANDAL: An American lawyer named Warren Rothman was tortured and nearly killed in China. State Department officials inadvertently collaborated with Rothman’s would-be killers and didn’t exactly handle that mistake in a confidence-inspiring manner. Joel Brinkley has the story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

[Rothman] contacted officials at the State Department Office of the Inspector General and told them of the distressing role the acting consul and other consulate officers had played in his own drama.

Well, late last month, the inspector general’s office wrote back and told Rothman, “We have determined that the appropriate office to address your concerns is the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs” – the very State Department office where the diplomats in question worked.

There’s an ineffectual response, if ever I have heard one.

I wrote to the agency and asked why on earth it had referred Rothman back to the office where the accused bad actors worked. Brian D. Rubendall, special agent in charge of the office, told me simply: “Our office made the decision that” the State Department bureau was “best suited to handle the complaint.”

I hope I never have to count on these people.

THE MOBS ARE BACK: This sort of thing is not going to stop any time soon.

A mob torched and vandalised a village of Buddhists in Cox’s Bazaar’s Ramu Upazila early on Sunday in one of the worst religious attacks in Bangladesh apparently triggered by a Facebook posting allegedly defaming the Quran.

Eyewitnesses and police said the assailants set fire to at least six Buddhist temples and nearly 20 homes and looted and damaged more than a hundred others until 3am in the hate attack.

THIS IS A DAMN SHAME: Fighting in Syria has severely damaged the medieval souk in Aleppo. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Here are some pictures of what it looked like before it burned.

A BRAVE MAN: Israel journalist and researcher Jonathan Spyer illegally sneaked into Syria to report on Assad’s killing fields.

KENYA SAYS it has captured the last bastion of the Al Shabab terrorist group in Somalia.

HA! Iranian news agency falls for Onion story, plagiarizes it.

GARY MOORE on Mexico’s gruesome massacre era.

I LINK, YOU DECIDE.

Max Boot: Five Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now.

Gary Gambill: Intervention Won’t Save Syria.

HEZBOLLAH doubles down on Bashar al-Assad.

ME IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Give Egypt’s Aid Money to Libya.

EGYPT ISN’T AN ALLY. This is what a real Arab ally of America looks like.

THE INTERNET HAS A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY: What Amazon.com’s first home page looked like in 1995.

UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT: Egyptian prosecutors refer a man to trial for ripping a Bible. If Egypt’s rulers thinks this sort of thing will placate Americans, they have a lot to learn.

SOMEBODY IN CAIRO GETS IT: Egyptian newspaper fights cartoons with cartoons.

IRAN SAYS IT WILL BOYCOTT next year’s Oscars because of that Mohamed video everyone’s rioting over. I’d say “whatever,” but this year’s best foreign film award went to A Separation, which is Iranian. That film is magnificent. It’s not about politics, but I did enjoy the jabs at the government and the country’s religious zealots that were too subtle for the bovine-like censors to notice.

THE EMIR OF QATAR calls for armed intervention in Syria.

MONA ELTAHAWY was arrested by New York subway police for spray-painting over an incendiary ad. I’ve been tempted to pull down offensive posters in my own neighborhood, but I resist because it’s wrong. Some people have to learn things the hard way, I guess.

JAMES LINVILLE: In the Middle East, where is the indispensable nation?

NEITHER A PUPPET NOR A NEOPHYTE: James Kirchick on Paul Ryan’s foreign policy views.

LIBYA’S ARMY is going after the country’s militias with some success. Libya had better succeed. The last thing the world needs is an oil-rich Somalia or Yemen across the water from Italy.

ONE OF THE BEST New York Post covers ever.