April 30, 2006
'Zarqawi' - 09:51 PMMichael Scheuer had some interesting things to say to ABC today. What were they? He told Four Corners that during 2002, the Bush Administration received detailed intelligence about Zarqawi's training camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. Mr Scheuer claims that a July...
'Stephen Colbert Rocks the House' - 06:33 PM
Wooow. Stephen Colbert, standing not three feet from the President and First Lady, set off a few tactical nukes at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend. Here's the full transcript, half of the video (UPDATE: full video here, and...
April 24, 2006
'That Can't Be Good' - 02:57 PMTurkey moves 40,000 troops to the Iraq border, and Iran is bolstering their forces as well. Both targetting Kurdish areas, ostensibly in retaliation for PKK attacks based from there. Turkey already has 250,000 troops in theatre, so this brings the...
April 22, 2006
'For Our Own Good' - 04:12 PMThere's always a temptation to call down your political opponents for legal, ethical, and moral infractions that you would more easily excuse when committed by your political allies. High crimes and misdemeanors on the other side are part of their...
April 21, 2006
'Iran Gets Its Own Archive Category' - 03:47 PMJim Henley has a masterful post on our ongoing shenanigans in Iran. Go read it right now. To whet your appetites: Here’s where my impulse is to say, “passing lightly over the utter moral bankruptcy of using terrorists to conduct...
'Drum Roll' - 01:56 PM
Kevin Drum of Political Animal has been on quite a... roll lately. He flags some interesting details in a piece on Iran: It was presented as having support from all major players in Iran's power structure, including the supreme leader,...
'Penny Arcade' - 01:33 PM
If Jerry Holkins, aka "Tycho," of Penny Arcade were to sit down and start regaling me with stories culled from a phone book, I have no doubt they would be the most lavish and fascinating tales I had ever experienced....
April 20, 2006
'Fault Lines' - 09:51 AMVia Laura Rozen, Harper's has a very interesting (even if it engages in some rather incendiary metaphors) article on splits at the CIA: With the war in Iraq an utter debacle and public opinion turned against the White House, anger...
April 18, 2006
'A Day in the Life of a SIPA Student' - 11:35 PM08:00 wake up, remember I wanted to set the alarm for 7:00 instead. 08:15 coffee: fresh ground french press 08:30 shower, shave, dress, email, webcomics, quick news-check 09:00 out the door 09:15 History of the Modern Middle East class (I’m...
'Iranian Calculations' - 10:14 AM
Further driving home this point about Iran's nuclear plans, Matthew Yglesias makes a very cogent point about their national interest calculus: That observation could lead in various directions, but it's worth recalling that this is all taking place at a...
April 17, 2006
'Cobra II - A Talk with Michael Gordon' - 11:00 PMThe lecture/discussion events at SIPA keep on rolling with a talk by Michael Gordon about his book, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. (No, I'm not actually a shill for Amazon Books) I'm still...
'More Iran' - 05:31 PM
Via Talking Points Memo, Greg Djerejian of Belgravia Dispatch gives us a very useful quote-heavy comparison of the Administration's obfuscations in the lead up to the Iraq War and their current smokescreen over the Iran planning. For two reasons, the...
April 15, 2006
'We Knew This In January 2005' - 12:46 AMVia Making Light, Digby reports on a CNN interview with Col. (retired) Sam Gardiner (former faculty at the National War College) over the alleged Iran bombing campaign plans: GARDINER: Sure. Actually, Jim, I would say -- and this may shock...
April 14, 2006
'Fourteen Months, Huh?' - 06:08 PMHarry Shearer catches Gen. Tommy Franks, defending Donald Rumsfeld and the execution of the Iraq War when he accidentally adds a little to our previous discussion: "Ask him about the 14 months we spent planning this thing." Which, as Harry...
'First They Came For the Vegans' - 02:17 PM
While I understand very well the impetus to misuse executive powers (legal, surveillance, or otherwise) against your political opponents, I've never quite understood how this Administration determines that groups like PETA and ELF are such worthy adversaries: In a bulletin...
April 13, 2006
'On Bullshit' - 02:41 PMThe question of the day, with respect to Iraq's WMD program-related activities, is when and whether Bush et. al. knew that the "mobile biological weapons labs" touted so often in the lead up and initial aftermath of the war were...
'Fast Tracking' - 10:19 AM
Via Kevin Drum, Max Boot has a modest proposal for the immigration conflagration: Lost in the uproar has been an idea so meritorious that it should win universal assent: Create a fast track toward citizenship for those willing to serve...
April 12, 2006
'Trying to Get Committed' - 11:15 PMAs you may or may not know, the word on the street these days is that the Bush Administration's next big project is 'a sustained bombing campaign in Iran [which] will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to...
April 09, 2006
'Blatant Meme Bandwagoning' - 08:55 PMUndue excitement over memes, network effects, and the Information Revolution! No mention that this is hardly new: (A parenthetical recognition that posting becomes much easier when implementation is left as an exercise for the reader.) Heh. Indeed....
April 07, 2006
'An Insurgent Campaign?' - 02:19 PMHey, it's worked before. In the Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan does her best to blow up the conventional view of Democrats as headless chickens: When reporters do write about Democratic victories, they often omit the protagonists from the story completely,...
April 06, 2006
'Cartoon Violence' - 11:58 PMThis is quickly going to teach me not to bring my laptop to campus events. I attended another discussion panel event today, one that I actually helped organize. The topic was the "Mohammed cartoons" published in the Jyllands-Posten in Denmark,...
April 05, 2006
'Col. Ahmed Hashim on the Iraqi Insurgency' - 03:25 PMI'm frequently going to special panel discussions and lectures on various topics either at Columbia or elsewhere in New York, usually with the intent to blog them afterwards. Few of them really lend themselves to that however. Most go for...
April 03, 2006
'Pissing on Trees' - 06:36 PMFred Clark once again takes the battle to the culture warriors: From the bogus "War on Christmas" to the fetishistic devotion to Ten Commandments markers, this territory-marking has become an obsession for many of the alleged followers of Christ. "They'll...