December 07, 2010
Or at least the liars: 3.32pm: "This case is not about WikiLeaks," district judge Howard Riddle told the court, according to my colleague Sam Jones, who was there. No. Of course not. Sexual assault in Sweden is of the utmost...
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January 12, 2010
It remains a deeply troubling place. A prince is found not guilty on torture charges. Sheikh Issa bin Zayed, brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the President of the United Arab Emirates (and on of the world's worst...
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January 11, 2010
The NYT notes that intel analysts are awash in data from the drones flying over Afghanistan and Iraq. Really? Whoda thunk it; more sensors equal more data; more data and the same number of analysts equals less analysis. Of significantly...
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January 02, 2010
Or rather, not confirming them. That's what the parliament in Afghanistan chose to do to over two-thirds of the people put forward by President Karzai. However, the nominees most strongly backed by the United States were confirmed. The one woman...
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November 29, 2009
It strikes me as a bad idea to put issues tied to religious liberty to a popular vote. But of course some countries use national initiatives to settle a variety of questions, and this weekend Switzerland has voted to ban...
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November 18, 2009
It remains to be seen who will get the nod (the most discussed possibilities are the heads of government of the Benelux countries), but I did like this description of the job: a Wizard of Oz without even the giant,...
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November 16, 2009
Yes, Crowley is throwing the dreaded g word into his analysis. Not all of the things he mentions are gaffes (surely not her response to that demeaning question in Africa - though a writer for The New Republic seeing that...
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October 31, 2009
I have to say I'm pleased when scientists so publicly rebuke the political pandering of politicians. And I am not going to miss Gordon Brown when he (and Labour) goes down in flames next year....
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October 13, 2009
The Chinese are moving forward in refurbishing the Varyag (bought from the Ukraine a few years back) and have started construction of what looks to be training facilities for carrier operations inland. This won't give the Chinese full carrier potential...
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September 22, 2009
... that colors could be misleading....
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July 15, 2009
I'm away at a full-on Geek-Fest Summer Camp for a few weeks. It's an academic retreat that teaches security studies, with a specific focus on military strategy and operations. We spent a couple hours today arguing about Lee at Gettysburg,...
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This is absolutely awesome. Marc Lynch explains the battles between rap stars via international relations theory. And it works....
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July 02, 2009
Good....
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June 19, 2009
More bad news from Somalia: The death of Omar Hashi Aden and at least 20 others in a suicide bomb attack on a hotel in central Somalia could shift power towards the country’s main militant Islamist group, al-Shabaab, which claimed...
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June 08, 2009
Last weekend we saw record low turnout in Europe produce wins for the right, the far right, racists, Greens, and the Pirate Party. In Lebanon's national elections though there was record high turnout, and it resulted in another win for...
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June 07, 2009
Results here. For people who aren't fans of the status quo, this should be fun. It looks like fringe parties on the right and the left are going to do well in this unusually low-turnout election. The thread should also...
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June 05, 2009
Some great stuff here on Gordon Brown's reshuffle and the results of the UK's local elections. Among the high/low-lights. 17.32 Caroline Flint has launched an astonishing attack on Gordon Brown in her resignation statement. Less than 24 hours after praising...
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June 02, 2009
It's hard to imagine there's a major government in worse shape than California's, but the one in London looks that way of late. The scandal which took down the Speaker (a new one will be elected in about 3 weeks)...
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May 24, 2009
A troubling change....
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May 14, 2009
There have been two recent torture related debates floating around that I have wanted to add my two-cents to. 1. Obama's U-turn on the photos of detainees. Look; I understand the "don't release" side of this argument. I see that...
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May 04, 2009
He thinks Stephen Walt and Dan Drezner have, at best, a weird take on the movies you really need to see to understand IR....
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May 03, 2009
They aren't just in old Greek plays any more....
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April 28, 2009
Westerwelle is the openly gay leader of the FDP party which is polling unusually well at the moment. Should that continue it's forecast that he could become foreign minister this fall. And if that happens a new set of issues...
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April 26, 2009
I continue to be confused by the right-wing assertions in this scandal. They've claimed everything from "the techniques we used were not torture" (wrong) to "the Democrats can't/shouldn't change the laws to criminalize acts of the previous administration" (wrong again:...
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April 22, 2009
... but go fuck yourself: Ah, diplomacy....
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April 20, 2009
RUMINT (Rumor Intelligence) is always fun, if not necessarily accurate. So, we can wait a day or so for the actual truth to emerge here. That doesn't mean we can't start speculating, however. Via TMP (just cut and pasted in...
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April 16, 2009
So much could be different if Tora Bora had gone differently. That it wasn't a bigger issue in the 2004 campaign amazes me. Kerry tried to make it an issue - but didn't push it enough. And the media really...
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March 16, 2009
They've got to be kidding, right? If Israel was, say, Austria, an appointment of this sort would come with howls of protest and moves to kick the European nation out various events and institutions. It will indeed be interesting to...
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March 15, 2009
Hosted by the Economist, a roundtable featuring Dani Rodrik and others....
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March 10, 2009
This is a terrible thing. It certainly conveys that some concepts and ideas are to be off-limits in decision making. How can that possibly help if the goal is to create a carefully-considered foreign policy?...
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February 05, 2009
Bolivia. Maybe they'll have to set another Bond film there....
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January 15, 2009
Hilzoy thinks Obama has to do it: It seems to me that these facts imply that if Barack Obama, or his administration, believe that there are reasonable grounds to believe that members of the Bush administration have committed torture, then...
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January 11, 2009
Stephen Walt smacks Peter Feaver upside the head (his language is more polite than that, but that's the effect)....
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December 30, 2008
Zbigniew!...
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November 28, 2008
It strikes me as a fine way to use the Vice President-elect. Actually focusing him on that, in tandem with putting Senator Clinton and Gen. Jones on Israeli deals with the Syrians and Palestinians, could do a great deal of...
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October 21, 2008
That's what a reporter just got from a court in Afghanistan. Yet another example to bring up, should you wish to argue against the assertion that regime change led by the United States is spreading freedom around the world....
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October 07, 2008
If you believe in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the associated regime, this deal is something between a step backward and an unmitigated disaster. So, that being the case it's worth noting who the 13 senators are who stood...
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October 06, 2008
Interesting....
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October 03, 2008
It's underway, and the big political story is that Peter Mandelson is moving back into the government. Among the other moves: Margaret Beckett is also back, Leader of the Lords Baroness Ashton will replace Mandelson in Brussels, Ed Miliband...
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September 24, 2008
Well the bombing in Islamabad just gets more disturbing. It was the biggest bomb to go off in Pakistan in several years. Dozens were killed. It was clearly aimed at international guests in the country. On a personal note, that's...
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September 20, 2008
Index of global Relevancy to to average american....
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September 15, 2008
The Kadima Party will choose a new leader in only a couple of days. If the polls are right it appears that Israel will once again have a female prime minister. But once in that position (presuming she wins) Tzipi...
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September 12, 2008
Some big-picture points to keep in mind when you think about the future of the US presence in Afghanistan and the nature of our ties to Pakistan....
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September 10, 2008
And "we're running out of time"....
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September 09, 2008
The 20 Questions We Would Ask Sarah Palin It's a pretty good list. I might skip some of the more factual questions ("Who leads China and India?") in favor of more questions about policy (if you are only limited to...
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September 05, 2008
I think the Armchair Generalist has a good description of how we apparently choose to dole out foreign aid (your money) these days. Call the State Department now to get more details on this limited-time event. Dial 1-800-XXX-XXXX, press "1"...
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September 04, 2008
Dick Cheney, being kept as far away from the Republican National Convention as is humanly possibly, has stated (publicly) that Georgia should join NATO: TBILISI, Georgia - Vice President Dick Cheney flew here on Thursday to deliver a forceful American...
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August 15, 2008
Hilzoy has linked to this, which makes an excellent point. John McCain (and the Neocon war-war-war chorus) might not be besties with the president of Iran. But I'd be hard pressed to think of anyone who's doing more this month...
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August 14, 2008
Yes, the McCain campaign either lacks any sense of irony or the candidate has such a lack of self-awareness that one wonders if he's conscious. It's hard to imagine behavior more "presumptuous", as the word was defined by McCain earlier...
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August 08, 2008
Bloody international conflict on the day that sees the opening of the 2008 Olympics....
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August 07, 2008
Didn't know there'd been one? Neither did I....
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August 06, 2008
US olympians are kowtowing before the Chinese, apologizing for wearing face masks (I was just talking to someone who was there last week - she was talking about how in Beijing you can't see the sun). And the chairman of...
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July 30, 2008
In September there will be a new prime minister....
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July 21, 2008
More evidence that Obama is the candidate of savvy members of the foreign policy establishment (which tends to be populated by George H.W. Bush Republicans). And for good reason.Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration....
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July 12, 2008
Zimbabwe is a mess. Mugabe has clearly "stolen" the election via violence and intimidation. For whatever reason (likely related to past histories of colonialism and rejecting those former colonizers politics), the African states (especially South Africa) seem unwilling to put...
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July 10, 2008
How did I not know about this sooner? Tonight I played an international game of, essentially, RISK. I played with Baltar and a former student of ours who now works for a European government. This former student, who keeps vampire...
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July 02, 2008
I had no idea Nelson Mandela was on the terror watch list until just now, when I spotted this report that he was being removed by a bill today. South Africa's apartheid government had designated the ANC a terrorist organization...
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June 27, 2008
Gotta agree with Hilzoy here. Kicking Russia out would be dumb. Trying to kick Russia out when you can't even make good on your word adds a whole new layer of dumbness. When it would anger someone were you to...
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June 23, 2008
Yes, there does seem to be something missing from the logic of our former ambassador to the UN: So let me see if I have this straight: A country that is supposedly so irrational, reckless and religiously fanatical that its...
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June 17, 2008
The American right's favorite Frenchie is slashing the size of his country's military, closing 50 bases, increasing spending on intelligence, and rejoining NATO's military command....
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June 16, 2008
Is it just me, or was this story oddly under-reported? Big, multi-part operation, several guards killed, hundreds of Taliban prisoners escape ... and in yesterday's edition of the local paper it was reported on page 7D....
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June 14, 2008
Mark Hosenball notes that the 3 top Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, all former presidential candidates, are "running" for Secretary of State - John Kerry, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd. While Bill Richardson and others should certainly be...
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June 12, 2008
Wow. Can you imagine something like this happening in the US? The Shadow Home Secretary, who generally ran to David Cameron's right in the 2005 race for the leadership of the Conservative Party, is resigning his seat in parliament in...
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June 10, 2008
There's a lot of work suggesting that oil wealth hurts the cause of democratization, so perhaps it's not too surprising that apparently it also has a negative effect on women's rights....
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June 06, 2008
"Unavoidable?" That's troubling, to put it mildly. Also troubling, this comment was made at the same time as meetings between Olmert and Bush in which Iran was the "dominant subject". I'd say we should fasten our seatbelts. And it's...
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May 28, 2008
Huh. I missed this in last week's news, but it's a reminder of just how tense things are in Israel right now. Tony Blair came within moments of being killed when two Israeli fighter aircraft threatened to shoot down a...
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May 23, 2008
Interesting - so Pakistan is better for them than Iraq, like Kenya is better than Somalia....
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May 21, 2008
The keys according to the New York Times: Lebanon will finally get a president, but Hezbollah will have veto power over the new government.One wonders if Israel's peace talks with Syria are tied to this. And will John McCain denounce...
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May 09, 2008
Awful news from Beirut. The battles spread within moments of a rare news conference by the leader of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who effectively endorsed the use of violence by his supporters against fellow Lebanese. This is...
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May 02, 2008
And Labour takes a beating all over....
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60 judges, including the chief justice, are to return to their jobs. That would seem to be bad news for Musharraf - but good news for a freer Pakistan....
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I assumed Labour would do poorly, but I didn't think they'd do this poorly: Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party was headed toward its worst local election defeat in four decades on Friday, fueling doubts about Brown's ability to lead...
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April 28, 2008
That's the message Ben Smith sees in these pieces by the Boston Globe (on Hillary Clinton and Iran) and Fareed Zakaria (on John McCain's call for "war" against Russia and China)....
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April 18, 2008
Larry Bartels had a column in yesterday's New York Times noting that it's not working-class people who vote at unusual levels on social issues - it's wealthier people. This holds internationally too right? The green revolution in Europe, or the...
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April 09, 2008
Suicide bombers....
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April 06, 2008
Yeah, this really does cut to the chase, doesn't it: So, just so that we're clear on this. We are building an army full of people who are still getting pension payments from an organization that the U.S. has designated...
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March 25, 2008
Yesterday Galrahn posted on the big increase in naval activity in the Middle East - "we find it noteworthy we are in the midst of the largest European naval surge to the Middle East in the 21st century and nobody...
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March 21, 2008
Now this makes me happy, mostly at the thought that Richardson could be considered for a VP or other major foreign policy spot in an Obama administration. As you know, I have been less willing than Armand to commit in...
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March 17, 2008
Yep. That's what you call it: The account that emerges from those interviews, and from access to previously unpublished documents, makes clear that Mr. Bremer’s decree reversed an earlier plan - one that would have relied on the Iraqi military...
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March 13, 2008
Errrr, what are the courts in the UK smoking - they don't think there is systematic persecution of gays in Iran? That would come as a shock to the gays of Iran. Seems pretty clear to me if this teenager's...
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February 19, 2008
China Hand does a masterful job of concisely analyzing the outcome of the election, and the different roads the near future might take. He's also got a nice map of the results. If you are interested in the topic this...
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February 18, 2008
Sick, and yet sadly so predictable....
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February 08, 2008
This will be somewhat obscure, 'cause I don't want this to be public (this will make sense; just read on).I've been invited to have dinner with a gentleman being inducted to this august University's Alumni Hall of Fame (or whatever...
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February 07, 2008
From the people that President Bush prances around hand-in-hand with ...An American businesswoman was carted off to jail by religious police in Saudi Arabia for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks in Riyadh, the Times of London reported....
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January 26, 2008
Charli Carpenter discusses the unique position of the Vatican here, and raises an interesting hypothetical. It's true the Holy See has the ostensible status of a state for the purposes of multilateral treaty negotiations. It sits on deliberations over UN...
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January 18, 2008
They are building a French military base in their country, and constructing copies of Lyon and the Louvre....
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January 17, 2008
No. Not even close.In the wake of the president's visit to the region Abu Aardvark has a post up that includes lots of links that point to increasing and improving ties between Iran and the GCC monarchies. And about the...
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December 21, 2007
And apparently US criticism played a part in their decision. Japan dropped the planned taking of 50 humpbacks - which have been off-limits to commercial hunting since 1966 - at the behest of the United States, the chair of the...
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December 13, 2007
Actually, that's not a bad idea. Hey, if nothing else it's a bit of insurance against the killing blow to our image abroad that electing another Republican in November would be. And it's not like Vice President Cheney hasn't presented...
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December 10, 2007
That's Robert Farley's advice, and it's good advice. Just about any nuclear program can be negotiated away. Iraq gave up its nuclear program (as well as its other WMD programs) years before the U.S. invasion of 2003. Libya began steps...
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December 07, 2007
That's what Gerald Posner is raising. And while I'm not often given to thinking there's much to "conspiracy theories" the deaths of those princes have always looked really peculiar....
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December 03, 2007
It appears that the intelligence community still hates the Bush administration. Oh, and that Iran's nuclear weapons program was halted 4 years ago. A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003...
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The leaders of March 14 are extremely annoyed, and Hariri wasn't even informed, but pressure from the French, the Egyptians and the Saudis was enough to get a new president elected in Lebanon. Joshua Landis has the story and a...
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While there could be more going on here than meets the eye given the intricacies of Iranian politics, the New York Times sure doesn't show us that. In fact, it's just the opposite. They paint this turn as bleak and...
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November 30, 2007
Bring us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, afraid of being tortured in the United States: The United States is not a safe country for refugees, the Federal Court said Thursday as it ruled that Canada will no longer...
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November 25, 2007
It's a sign of how far the US has moved in the last decade that the current and former heads of Israel's highest court are noting that Israel is much better at protecting human rights than the United States. Of...
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November 24, 2007
On handshaking: Some politicians (I won't name names, but you know who I mean) won't shake Hugo's hand. It's not that Sarkozy thinks Chavez is a great guy or an example of good governance, but that he appreciates that Chavez...
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November 14, 2007
This detailed post is almost a week old, but well worth reviewing if you are interested in Israel/Palestinian issues. Long story short, the Israeli government is actually in a surprisingly good position to approve further deals with the Palestinians when...
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November 12, 2007
Via Majikthise, we find nuclear security lacking in South Africa: A brazen attack by four gunmen on the Pelindaba nuclear facility has left a senior emergency officer seriously injured. ... He was shot in the chest when the gunmen stormed...
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November 01, 2007
Apparently men can't be raped there - which may come as a surprise to the men who are raped there. Ah, the power of language and identity ......
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October 26, 2007
Sure we've been annoying them no end of late - but maybe giving them two Perry-class frigates and two minesweepers (3 for free, one at a greatly reduced price) will take the edge off that a tiny bit. Looks like...
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October 20, 2007
If an unchecked presidency and human rights violations are okay for the US, Russia wonders why it can't engage in similar practices.And yes, perhaps Secretary Rice should have thought twice before going there....
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October 18, 2007
Or "How Osama Bin Laden Beat George W. Bush".Yes on occasion good articles can be found inside The New Republic, and this one is insightful. The general tale is familiar, but the details are enlightening and deeply depressing....
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October 15, 2007
That's what John Cole seems to think the Democrats are up to. I think that's flat-out wrong. If the Democratic leadership in the Congress really wanted to end war in Iraq there are several other things they could do that...
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October 07, 2007
The rule of law (or what looks more like it to American eyes) is coming to Saudi Arabia....
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September 26, 2007
Josh Marshall thinks that more or less what happened yesterday. Among those voting "yea" on Kyl-Lieberman were Hillary Clinton, and 3 of our 4 regional senators (Rockefeller, Casey and Specter).UPDATE: Apparently most of the worst language in the amendment was...
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September 19, 2007
And yet again an anti-Syrian lawmaker appears to have been the target. He was killed, as were several others....
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September 16, 2007
I'm no expert on the leaders of the LDP, but it's interesting how quickly the press and analysis has turned regarding Prime Minister Abe's successor. In a few days it's gone from Aso being a sure thing, to it likely...
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September 12, 2007
Posted without comment, from the Economist (p. 14): A recent glance at the Low Countries revealed that, nearly three months after its latest general election, Belgium was still without a new government. It may have acquired one by now. But,...
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September 07, 2007
So any thoughts on why this is coming out now? My first thought is to influence the debate over the "Petraeus Report". Agree? Disagree? As far as the effect he has on US policy debates this is sort of interesting,...
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September 06, 2007
Joe Klein notes something (in the midst of a very depressed column about the latest Republican presidential debate) that I pretty much never hear in discussions of the possibility that Iran would launch a nuclear attack against Israel:... the fact...
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September 02, 2007
In terms of who I read on occasion, I seem to disagree with Matt Stoller more often than any other lefty blogger. And I think this would be another one of those cases. What exactly is so terrible about divesting...
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August 28, 2007
This is one of those mornings when I hate Connecticut Republicans. Why oh why couldn't we have had Sen. Ned Lamont instead? Instead we get the frothing at the mouth, unglued from reality war-war-war rhetoric of Sen. Joe Lieberman. Ugh....
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August 27, 2007
Greek authorities are discussing whether the fires ravaging the country could be considered to be terrorism: Dimitris Papangelopoulos, who is responsible for prosecuting terrorism and organized crime, ordered an investigation to determine "whether the crimes of arsonists and of arson...
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August 21, 2007
I imagine this is going to be Obama labeled as 'inexperienced" right? (Yes, by the same people's whose "experience" has led to the wildly successful US foreign policies we have seen in Iraq and ... Cuba) Accordingly, I will use...
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August 16, 2007
It's hot (back into the high 80s, with approximately the same humidity); I'm tired (I start teaching three classes on Monday). Thus, I'm cranky. Consider this a wrap-up of the things I have muttered to myself this past week. If...
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August 15, 2007
Victor Davis Hanson is famously stupid (as has been pointed out again and again by the folks at Lawyers, Guns and Money), so maybe he really did mean "paper tiger". That would fit with his general habit of making assertions...
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August 12, 2007
Feeling safer yet? Al Qaeda is the strongest it has been since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new U.S. government analysis concludes, according to a senior government official who has seen it. Despite a campaign...
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August 11, 2007
Literally. For the life of me I'll never understand why this doesn't get discussed more in the media's discussion of what victory entails, or whether the US can "win"....
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August 10, 2007
In a surprise to no one, any domestic political party the US tries to help in the Middle East loses in democratic elections. Thus, the US is bringing democracy to a region that is systematically voting against us. Gee, wonder...
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In all the back and forth over the supposed Obama/Clinton brouhaha over Pakistan I'm really surprised that I never saw this brought up. As to the case in Lebanon, it's highly troubling though also completely predictable....
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August 07, 2007
President Karzai believes Iran is helping his country. To that President Bush responds ... well, I'm not sure. Can you make this out? "The president knows best about what's taking place in his country, and of course, I'm willing to...
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August 01, 2007
Marc Ambinder discusses the foreign policy agenda that Sen. Obama is laying out this morning.,/p> As President, Barack Obama would order attacks on terrorist camps in Pakistan even if its president, Gen. Pervais Musharraf, refused to give permission and would...
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July 30, 2007
Don't you know that Condi Rice and Bob Gates are just thrilled that our UN Ambassador made these comments just before they visit Saudi Arabia? I presume the administration planned this, but talk about a way to make some difficult...
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July 28, 2007
$50 billion. Massive increases in arms sales to both Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies - that's what we need to bring about peace in the Middle East, right?...
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July 27, 2007
In today's New York Times: WASHINGTON, July 26 - Three years after President Bush urged global rules to stop additional nations from making nuclear fuel, the White House will announce on Friday that it is carving out an exception for...
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July 04, 2007
This is the kind of story that has huge international implications, but which I imagine the US media won't cover at all. I mean it's much more important that we see pics of high school bands and great big flags...
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July 03, 2007
Has anyone noticed that Britain's response to the round/wave of bombings is to use the law, arrest people according to the law (technically, they can "hold" them for 28 days before arresting them or letting them go, but the law...
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July 02, 2007
George Packer (who wrote a great book on Iraq last year) also has a blog over at the New Yorker. He muses about Phil Carter (who runs Intel-Dump, a great military blog), who has served in Iraq and now feels...
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Also from Neatorama, a simple modification to a time worn practice: water jugs that roll, so people without running water can transport more easily....
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June 29, 2007
I see that the Supreme Court has decided to see if Congress can pass a law that forbids people (granted, non-citizens) from having access to our judicial system. I'll agree that, in theory, this is a question the Court should...
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June 28, 2007
Here you can find a visual rundown of who was who in Tony Blair's cabinet, contrasted with who is filling the positions in the Gordon Brown Cabinet. Only one person is staying in the same slot (Des Browne at Defence...
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That AIPAC is friendlier with Republicans than Democrats is hardly shocking news. They are basically in bed with the neocons and a large number of Christianist Republicans. But evenso ... you've got to be kidding me: The aid to Israel,...
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June 27, 2007
Bust out the champagne (or at least break out the mimosas) - Tony Blair has resigned. Gordon Brown is now prime minister (the first Scot in the job since Sir Alec Douglas-Home), and he's expected to name the top members...
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June 24, 2007
In a few days Gordon Brown will succeed Tony Blair as prime minister. In advance of that, today he became the new leader of the Labour party. That was of course expected. What was not expected was that the new...
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June 21, 2007
I can see a big upside in the proposal for a Name Every Victim law - politically, ethically, and in our ability to make better-informed choices as a nation. Still, I can't imagine that our "pro-life" administration would support it...
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June 19, 2007
We have a different "enemy," but just about everything else is the same. Via DefenseTech, we find that the US and China are installing a "hot line" to facilitate communications during crises. Just like the Cold War (where we had...
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June 18, 2007
What happens when a state can't - or won't - rely on a standing army to accomplish its security objectives? Privatization. In the case of the war in Iraq, it looks like the private sector has found new and improved...
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Foreign Policy released this year's failed states index. Iraq has moved up from 4th place (the last two years) to second. The top ten: 1) Sudan 2) Iraq 3) Somalia 4) Zimbabwe 5) Chad 6) Ivory Coast 7) Democratic Republic...
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June 17, 2007
Wow. Do you think she could be a little more condescending? Just maybe? Maria Carvajal walks the sweltering streets of Tijuana, Mexico, clutching a photo of her mentally disabled son, who she says went missing after being deported more than...
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June 03, 2007
Basic counterinsurgency strategy (best discussed about forty years ago in Galula's counterinsurgency bible, written after Galula served in Algeria, and observing France's failing attempts to win in Vietnam) argues that counterinsurgency is fundamentally political. On one side is the government,...
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May 31, 2007
I have yet to see this question answered in any of the press I've read on Zoellick's nomination to be the next head of the World Bank, so I'll ask ya'll in case you might know - Is he nominated...
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May 27, 2007
Will it be the general or the admiral? It sure as hell isn't going to be the current party leader, the Defense Minister. Ami Ayalon, a former head of the navy and former head of Shin Bet is likely to...
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May 21, 2007
This definitely isn't the first time I've heard of such a thing. But it's pretty remarkable nonetheless, and one does wonder about the circumstance under which Israel decided to cede sovreignty over its dealing with a state it's at war...
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May 18, 2007
While the race to replace Tony Blair is no race at all - Gordon Brown's is the only name in contention - the Labour party is seeing a competitive contest to replace John Prescott as Deputy Leader. Hillary Benn managed...
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May 17, 2007
One of the prime problems with US policy in the Mid East (if not the world) is that everyone believes that the US hates all of them, wants to bomb everybody, and generally couldn't give a dead rat what happens...
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May 16, 2007
One of the oddest bits of spin of the last month had to be the joy with which American "conservative" activists greeted the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France. They clearly betrayed their lack of knowledge of French...
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May 01, 2007
An interesting feature on the BBC - Over the last 10 years, what's become of Tony Blair's first cabinet?Three quarters of them are now out of the cabinet, and of those who remain only Blair, Chancellor (and soon to be...
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Wow. The secular opposition won the day in their fight to block Foreign Minister Gul's election to the presidency. The Constitutional Court decided that since their boycott of the election meant there was not the 2/3's quorum called for, the...
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April 25, 2007
Lovely segregationist policies, no? Uh, no. I'm continually baffled by people in this country who seem to believe that Israel is a vanguard for of liberal, secural Western views in the Middle East. It's not....
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April 23, 2007
Funny, I thought Iraq was now a democracy with an independent government. Did President Bush lie to me? Because if it is a democracy with an independent government, you'd think that a call by the prime minister to stop a...
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April 21, 2007
If anyone is in the mood to try to predict the results of the French presidential election (round 1), feel free to do so in the comments section of this thread. The consensus seems to be Sarkozy will come in...
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April 20, 2007
"George Bush's government is an accomplice of this terrorist," Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said. "It has protected him and today it has guaranteed his freedom, striking a blow against and mocking international law." Predictably, the Bush administration's decision to...
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April 19, 2007
Wolfowitz remains head of the World Bank, but the London Times says the White House is drawing up a list of possible Wolfowitz replacements. They only list one name though, Ashraf Ghani, the Chancellor of Kabul University. If he was...
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April 10, 2007
Hypocrisy? Aiding enemies of the US? Undermining their own freakin' foreign policies? You are just shocked, I know. Though actually, maybe Kevin's preceding post is even more damning. Are US prisons in Iraq basically terrorist academies?...
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April 09, 2007
This was posted last Friday, but as I think it's a wise observation I figured I would still link to it. The editor in chief of Foreign Policy thinks the US is still operating under the (incorrect) assumuptions that got...
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April 08, 2007
For those of us who have come to oppose the US adventures in Iraq (either recently or since 2002; either strenuously or moderately), this WaPo article presents the crux of the problem: An official in Iraq warned that executing the...
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March 30, 2007
Egypt slid even further away from democracy this week. One of the biggest recepients of US foreign aid has passed via national referendum a set of reforms that's been dubbed "a cancellation of the constitution". It appears that virtually no...
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March 19, 2007
They might be nasty in many ways, but Ezra's got a good point about the Iranian regime. As messed up as it is, it still has room for more political dissent than a lot of our allies allow. For all...
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March 13, 2007
Via YouTube, an explanation for America's Iraq policy in about four and a half minutes. Very close to accurate....
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March 12, 2007
Via a lurking reader, we get this classic BBC headline: Israel Recalls "Naked Ambassador": Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear. Reports say he was able to identify...
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If you didn't see Sunday's WaPo story on bureaucratic infighting, you should. Long story short: DC based bureaucrats try to remake Iraq into their (ideological) image. Iraqis ignore silly Americans, continue to duck mortar shells. As I noted before, my...
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March 11, 2007
Quite possibly, yes. That's great news....
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The center-right's Francois Bayrou continues to inch up in the public opinion polls, and he's now tied Socialist candidate Segolene Royal for 2nd place. Given that polls have shown Bayrou could defeat either Royal or front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy in a...
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March 03, 2007
Yeah they do things differently in other parts of the world. I really don't think President Bush would feel the urge to pardon several thousand people and commute the sentences of over twenty-four thousand more if Laura gave birth to...
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March 02, 2007
As I noted yesterday, our intelligence that North Korea was enriching uranium in violation of 1994's "Agreed Framework" may have been wrong. Today we find out that we may have been wrong on other aspects of North Korea. Knight Ridder/McClatchy...
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March 01, 2007
Yes, of course, we're talking about Bush's foreign policy again. Just when you think you've reached the nadir of stupidity, something else comes down the pike: For nearly five years, though, the Bush administration, based on intelligence estimates, has accused...
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February 28, 2007
Would someone please explain this to me: After 28 months of incarceration, Jabour -- who was described by a counterterrorism official in the U.S. government as "a committed jihadist and a hard-core terrorist who was intent on doing harm to...
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February 25, 2007
So, maybe saying that Negroponte isn't an an asshole doesn't even come close. According to Sy Hersh, Negroponte is "too ethical" for the Bush administration. Evidently Negroponte has been troubled by the Bush administration's plans due to his experiences in...
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February 16, 2007
Over at the Head Heeb there's an interesting post that highlights a paradox all too common to political divides in Israel - How does one give the Arabs some autonomy without endangering the ability of individual Arabs to integrate into...
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February 13, 2007
As any news source will tell you, there is a general agreement among the six parties to the appropriately named "Six Party Talks" with regard to the North Korean nuclear program. The general outlines of the argeement are interesting: North...
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February 09, 2007
...I'm looking forward to reading Harry Potter and International Relations. And while you're over there, you should check out the post after that book review, on why it is so difficult to debate the war in Iraq....
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February 03, 2007
I guess I've become too cynical and depressed about our policies in the Middle East (at least on this bitterly cold icy day) to raise a passionate call either for or against this move. Though I guess a big reason...
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January 24, 2007
I was fairly unimpressed by Bush's State of the Union speech last night. The tone was better (more engaged, more animated) than the dreary "library speech" of 10ish days ago, but the content hasn't really changed much. On domestic policy,...
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January 19, 2007
Some general points, based on the very (very) long view of history: 1. No state (or, for those of a historical bent, pre-state - empire, city-state, etc.) achieves permenant supremacy. They all (ALL) fall at some point (when they fall,...
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January 10, 2007
OK, I just listened to Bush's "New Strategy in Iraq Speech". I remain confused. We have something like 130,000 US troops in Iraq today. Bush is proposing sending an additional five brigades of troops to Iraq (plus 4,000 to Anbar...
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I argued a couple of days ago that Negroponte was an asshole for leaving ONI. The office is too new, and too fragile and important, to play with. I continue to feel that.However, armand brought this to my attention: Contrary...
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January 08, 2007
I think "Why Hawks Win" (co-written with the Nobel winner Daniel Kahneman) has been hyped to death on the IR and IR-related blogs. Some interesting thoughts, but the piece seems to have some notable flaws too. That said, it got...
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January 04, 2007
Via the NYT tonight. WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - John D. Negroponte, whom President Bush installed less than two years ago as the first director of national intelligence, will soon leave his post to become the State Department’s second-ranking official, administration...
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December 19, 2006
...about commie professors: A psychology professor at Florida International University, Alvarez faces up to five years in prison for conspiracy to become an unregistered foreign agent. Elsa Alvarez, who also worked at the university, faces up to three years in...
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December 17, 2006
Those are the only conclusions that one can draw from the latest study of public opinion in the Arab world (from Morocco to Saudi Arabia to Lebanon and Jordan). At a time when we need support in the region, desperately,...
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December 12, 2006
Faith, family, then country. That's the way to approach national defense. Jesus fucking christ....
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December 09, 2006
Binky pointed out to me that we haven't done much on recent political stories (our bread and butter), concentrating mostly on music, infotainment and other sundries. While this is true, I suspect our excuse is related to the fact that...
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December 08, 2006
...but Farley did a better job than I would have with my lack of focus....
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December 03, 2006
Micheal Lind's entry in to the "just how bad is George W. Bush?" discussion rates the current president as the fifth worst ever (after Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Madison). A key part of this rating stems from Bush waging...
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December 02, 2006
They believe they are electing the man who will become prime minister after the (expected) 2007 elections. And after a disappointing first ballot, it's looking more and more like that man might not be front-runner Michael Ignatieff. His 29% of...
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November 28, 2006
Ah yes, Tom Tancredo. Helluva way to solidify the Republican base in Miami. Rep. Tom Tancredo, the leader of the anti-illegal immigration faction in the U.S. House, spent a recent weekend at The Breakers in Palm Beach. Ninety miles to...
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November 27, 2006
Next weekend Canada's Liberals will elect their new leader. We can debate the value of newspaper endorsements. But when a non-front runner gets the public backing of the country's #2 newspaper, that would seem to be good news - at...
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November 26, 2006
Brian Ulrich has the results of the elections in Bahrain, and why discusses why politics in Bahrain matters....
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November 25, 2006
Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change is worth your time if you hope to be able to understand foreign policy, and more to the point, fluctuations in foreign policy. It's almost two books in one as the opening...
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Another week, another national election in Europe with no clear winner. In Wednesday's election all centrist parties lost votes, including Balkenende's Christian Democrats and the Liberals, which together had pushed through a number of business-friendly, freemarket measures in recent years....
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November 22, 2006
Interesting. Israel's Supreme Court has decided that the Israeli government has to recognize same-sex marriages of Israelis performed abroad. As Israel doesn't have civil marriages, this would seem to be as far as the state could go in supporting same-sex...
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November 17, 2006
The US Senate has signed on to President Bush's extremely troubling nuclear deal with India by a vote of 85-12. It's sets an extremely problematic precedent if we hope to get the proliferation of nuclear weapons under control. The 12...
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November 15, 2006
In case you've forgotten, former House Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA), who ran the House the last time a party was booted out of power there, went on to serve as the US ambassador to Japan from 1997-2001. Guess who a...
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November 14, 2006
This sounds bad. It's unusual for Palestinian groups to target Americans. And to think - it's stemming from something 99% of Americans (or more) haven't heard of. The second point is that four Palestinian armed factions issued a statement calling...
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November 08, 2006
So this is what President All Hat and No Cattle's distaste for multilateralism, treaties and enforcing the nonproliferation regime can lead to. We'll be so much safer when he's got a lot more free time to clear brush. Sadly, that's...
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October 30, 2006
In case all you've heard about Israeli politics lately is the rape charges being made against President Katsav ... Avigodr Lieberman is joining the government. Not only that - he's becoming Deputy Prime Minister and Strategic Threats Minister. While most...
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October 23, 2006
Glad to see someone else picking up the connection I wrote about a year ago. Silber, via Crooks and Liars....
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Yes, it means what Yglesias says it means, not what Mallaby and Team Bush seem to think it means (that behavior is called "talking"). Sadly for the country, Team Bush rarely, if ever, does diplomacy. And of course in more...
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October 17, 2006
Hey if it worked in Florida in 2000 ...''In the year 2000, I spent 31 days in Florida,'' Bolton told reporters at one point, referring to the long U.S. presidential election recount. ``This has just begun.''Nonetheless, you'd hope that voting...
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October 12, 2006
Between Orhan Pamuk winning the Nobel literature prize, and France's new law (or probable law - it's been approved by the lower house of parliament) making it illegal deny the Armenian genocide you've got to figure a lot of painkillers...
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October 11, 2006
Quite a lot of the left-leaning blogs have noted the section of the latest Bob Woodward book were presidential candidate George W. Bush is deeply befuddled about why he should care about North Korea (and, relatedly, his deep disdain for...
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October 10, 2006
"Maybe you know more than I do ..." If you can endure it - deal with the chills that run down your spine as you flash to one of those "we are so fucked" or "we're all gonna die!" moments...
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October 09, 2006
Oy. So is this yet another example of 1) Condi lying, 2) Condi being incompetent and not knowing what's going on in the world, or 3) the Bush administration's shockingly low standards for political "evolution"?...
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Uh, don't look now, but I think we have a fairly significant foreign policy crisis: North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test and the blast had been successfully set off underground with no radioactive leakage...
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October 06, 2006
"State of Denial," page 254. It was all Bremer's fault. No, seriously. That's the claim that the people Woodward interviews are making. A remarkably large number of people are going on record (again, both directly and indirectly) as saying that...
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October 05, 2006
State of Denial, by Woodward, page 179. This is really a facinating book. It's very different from "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack" (previous books by Woodward; the first about Afghanistan, the second about Iraq up to the day...
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I'm on page 71 of "State of Denial" by Woodward. Rumsfeld has managed to be a complete idiot once, and a partial idiot twice. Chronologically, we haven't even gotten to August, 2001. Gonna be a long book. (Oh, Woodward's usual...
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October 02, 2006
No, the other Georgia. Georgia, acting to defuse its worst crisis with Russia for years, said on Monday it would hand over to European mediators four Russian army officers arrested on spying charges. But reports that Moscow had suddenly ordered...
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September 30, 2006
So far the results are largely what was widely expected - former Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff has taken the lead, but it's not a commanding lead. Voting will continue throughout the weekend....
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A U.S. military official said Wednesday that American troops on Afghanistan's eastern border have seen a threefold increase in attacks since a recent truce between Pakistani troops and pro-Taliban tribesmen that was supposed to have stopped cross-border raids by the...
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September 29, 2006
They're good ones....
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There's more than a little evidence to suggest that they are.And the South Korean candidate continues to lead in the straw polls. In yesterday's poll Ban received 13 "encourage votes, 1 "discourage" and 1 "no opinion". India's Sashi Tharoor came...
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September 28, 2006
And so, it becomes official: The United States Senate voted the "compromise" detainee bill out this evening. The House of Representatives voted it out previously. It will become law within a matter of days. The bill establishes a legal foundation...
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September 26, 2006
Excerpts here and a link to the PDF file....
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September 24, 2006
(* And If They Don't, Why They Deserve To.) Dear Democratic Party, We (the country) recently had an interesting debate about torture. It was called something besides torture (stress positions, "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment", whatever the hell the latest...
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September 20, 2006
Over at the Duck of Minerva, PTJ argues that 9/11 didn't really change the world, but 9/20 (2001) did. What happened on 9/20? The President gave a (no famous) speech. In it, he proclaimed that the US would pursue terrorists...
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Oh boy, one of our strongest allies (and by that I mean a military/family/party dictatorship that's received billions from us and has an active and seemingly widely-supported banned Islamist opposition that would do great if free elections were allowed) in...
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September 19, 2006
The Thai military has launched a coup to remove the Prime Minister, who has been accused of corruption and abuse of power. The Prime Minister was in New York, for the UN General Assembly. There has been no reported blood...
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September 18, 2006
Radley Balko gets to the heart of the matter: In any case, the vagueness of the phrase "outrages on personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" is a real strength of the Convention, not a flaw. Why? Because those...
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Woo-hoo! Some good news in the world of IR, if, like me, you consider the proliferation of nuclear weapons to be a grave threat to national security. The five Stans have agreed to making their countries a nuclear-weapons-free zone. I...
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September 17, 2006
In the wake of a straw poll that seemed to suggest that South Korea's Ban was on an inside track to become the next Secretary-General (depending on exactly who voted against him), the United States has expressed some concern with...
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September 14, 2006
Are we really going to have a South Korean Secretary-General? It's looking more and more like that's going to happen. And I'm surprised Prince Zeid didn't do better (and that the Sri Lankan is still bothering to stay in the...
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September 10, 2006
The "above the fold" stories in today's (paper versions) New York Times and Washington Post: New York Times: At a Secret Interrogation, Dispute Flared Over Tactics, about the internal debate among the CIA, FBI and other agencies about the legalities...
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September 07, 2006
I've just started Fiasco by Tom Ricks, a book I've assigned as extra credit for my "Global Political Issues" class. I'm only a few pages in, but I did find this aside somewhat entertaining: [Wolfowitz's] soft voice and mild manner...
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As Kevin has noted at Political Animal, if you aren't following the escalating intra-party brawl surrounding just exactly when Tony Blair will step down as prime minister, you are missing a highly-entertaining show.On the substance of this, Brown is of...
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September 06, 2006
Zambians or China? Yet another illustration of China's growing influence in the developing world, especially in mineral-rich Africa ......
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September 05, 2006
Belgravia Dispatch Wow. When the moderates loathe you, it's time to hang it up....
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Not content with merely housing the world's number 1 nuclear-arms proliferator in palatial luxury, Pakistan has now publicly stated that it is giving Osama Bin Laden free rein to do what he likes in Pakistan without fear of arrest, provided...
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September 01, 2006
Far too much of the press coverage on Lebanon since the cease-fire has seemed to suggest - hey, Lebanon can now get on with rebuilding. Well, no, not yet it can't. The Israeli blockade continues and vital shipments of goods...
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August 30, 2006
OK, everybody knows that there are 5 states that are permanently on the UN Security Council. But the permanent members aren't the only countries that have been on the Council for several years (though, yes, they've been on far, far...
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August 29, 2006
On NPR this morning there was a story on the race between Venezuela and Guatemala for a seat on the UN Security Council. If you want to know more about the processes involved in Security Council elections, and the other...
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August 28, 2006
Where can I sign up with the skeptical realists? Where do I get my membership card and toaster? OK, more seriously, that link is to yet another great post by Greg at Belgravia Dispatch. And yeah, I realize that understanding...
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Posted by armand at
12:07 PM
|
TrackBack
August 24, 2006
It's getting to the point where the Administration (and supporters) just don't need any intelligence services at all. They already know everything they need to know about the world. Just ask them: Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican...
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August 22, 2006
Does anyone else find it peculiar that in the coverage (what there's been of it) of the president's statement that he's never going to leave Iraq there doesn't seem to be much of a focus on the fact that he's...
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August 21, 2006
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz appears to be facing a strong challenge for the party leadership, in the wake of the war in Lebanon....
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James Wimberley has some interesting thoughts on the wants, motivations and goals of Hezbollah. To me, the key lines are these - "Like the Knights Templars or the arms industry in different contexts, Hezbollah needs its conflict with Israel to...
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August 20, 2006
This morning James Fallows was interviewed on NPR. If you haven't read his cover story ("Declaring Victory") in the current issue of The Atlantic, I recommend it. There's not a lot new in it exactly. For example, some of it...
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Olivier Roy is right, as he often is - the "winners" of the fighting in Lebanon are Hizbollah and Iran, and if they can actually get some "old" Europeans tied down in Southern Lebanon it will be that much more...
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August 19, 2006
Perhaps President Bush might want to think about importing some traditional principles of governance from the Islamic world, instead of being focused so exclusively on exporting a few political notions that he personally favors....
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August 16, 2006
The World is Flat is a book by Thomas Friedman. As I refuse to recognize Thomas Friedman's right to exist, I decided to read Cobra II by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor instead. Found at Lawyers, Guns, and Money....
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The New York Times had a headline this morning: Bush Said to Be Frustrated by Level of Public Support in Iraq. The article goes on to describe a meeting Bush had with advisors last week, where the President seem annoyed...
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August 10, 2006
By now everyone and his brother (well, maybe not my brother) seems to have adopted the view that the Bush administartion is basically an series of effective sales pitches masking a series of unworkable, dangerous or incoherent policies. And yes,...
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...it's a good thing the British aren't taking a law enforcement approach to terror. British police acted urgently overnight, arresting 21 people in what U.S. government officials said privately could have been the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11. Goodness. I...
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August 07, 2006
I'm disturbed by the continued arguments (most, though not exclusively, right wing) that the use of force solves problems for states. I'm not going to bother with a laundry list of sites who argue this, but it's inherent in the...
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Praktike thinks the recent actions of the Egyptian opposition (in response to the war in Lebanon and Israel) show it can't be trusted with power.That's something you'd think the White House would have considered before they wedded themselves to the...
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August 06, 2006
Greg Sargent notes an oddly under-reported revelation regarding the war raging in Lebanon and Israel. Officials also say that available intelligence does not offer proof that Iran inspired or directed the Hezbollah kidnappings and rocket launchings that set off the...
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August 04, 2006
In this morning's links Juan Cole provides updates on the horrors in Lebanon (the bombings and destruction of course, but also the effects of Israel shutting off fuel shipments to Lebanon), but he also keeps an eye on Gaza (big...
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August 03, 2006
Interesting - the head of Labor is apparently pushing for a major military offensive on the ground in Lebanon, and the head of Likud (oh, sorry Kadima - most of what used to be Likud) is reluctant to push that....
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C'mon, how can you not love this? If I may channel my inner Raphael Patai for one generalization ... Really though, Cavanaugh raises a very interesting point. I'm not sure if he's right or if Pape is (my first response...
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August 01, 2006
The DMZ got a little warm today. Border guards of the two Koreas briefly traded fire Monday but there were no South Korean casualties, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Tuesday. The shootout occurred around 7:35 p.m. in Yanggu...
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July 31, 2006
The Cunning Realist picks up this pithy comment by Richard Haass (the director of policy planning at State during President Bush's first term), on President Bush's statement that the disaster in Lebanon is an "opportunity":"An opportunity?" Haass said with an...
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Marc Lynch notes how the war is gravely weakening (killing off entirely?) the domestic political position of moderating and liberalizing forces in the Arab world. Since 9/11 this has been a constant refrain among many Arab reformers and liberals: Bush's...
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July 30, 2006
Does anyone remember the debates about the numbers of "Level 1" versus "Level 2" Iraqi battalions? You remember, a "Level 1" battalion can stand and fight without US assistance, while a "Level 2" could fight with US support (logistics, air,...
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I found this story off a link on Juan Cole's site - does anyone know about this? It's the first I'd heard of the practice.In one instance, Major General McNarn vetoed a US plan to drop a range of huge...
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Mr Blair said he would carry on backing Mr Bush to the hilt. "I will never apologise for Britain being a strong ally of the United States," he told the BBC. Ummmm, ok Mr. Prime Minister - but if you...
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July 29, 2006
Watching Beirut Die. Hat tip to Feministe....
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July 27, 2006
Remember how back in 2002 the Bush administration waited until a few days after Congress voted on the Iraq War resolution to bother to disclose the extent of North Korea's nuclear activity? Well, in 2006 they've gotten even less subtle....
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July 26, 2006
So the president isn't raising a word of concern while the Israelis kill hundreds of Lebanese civilians in response to a few dozen Israelis being killed by Hezbollah troops based in Lebanon. He urges strong action to deal with the...
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July 25, 2006
Who Will Be the Next UN Secretary-General? has posted the results of the first Security Council straw poll in the race to succeed Kofi Annan. The members of the Security Council voted on the four individuals who have been formally...
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Everyone else seems to think so.This is really pathetic, awful and destabilizing all roled up in one. Yet more big-government lovin'/corporate welfare (subsidies) from Team Bush (though yeah this version is kind of retro and whatnot with the beneficiaries including...
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Why this is a scary combination. Go. Read....
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July 24, 2006
This strikes me as a gigantic threat to global stability, the kind of thing that in times of a competent presidency you'd think we'd prioritize stopping. But given the presidency that we have, and the president's current plan to legitimize...
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July 23, 2006
I read the Sunday papers so you don't have to: Most Interesting Story: The US is reducing our military spending in Africa. Why is this interesting? Al Qaeda (short term) and raw materials (long term). Follow me here. The Republican...
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If any of you are interested in a good, fast read on Lebanon during an Israeli invasion, and US/Israeli interactions during such an event, I recomend John Boykin's Cursed is the Peacemaker. It's primarily the tale of Phil Habib, when...
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July 22, 2006
Tony Blair stands doesn't disagree with his minister's comments criticizing Israel, and implicitly criticizing the US for not doing more to bring an end to the conflict"I very much hope that the Americans understand what's happening to Lebanon. The destruction...
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"What I won't do is go to some place and try to get a cease-fire that I know isn't going to last," she said.OK, so how about going to a war zone where innocent lives are being snuffed out every...
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July 21, 2006
Duck of Minerva has a retrospective on the buildup and execution of the Iraq War (2003 - 200?): The overall assumption evident throughout the political appointees of the Administration (and among Neo-con talking heads) was that inside each little Iraqi...
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The War on Terrorble Diseases....
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July 20, 2006
It's a complicated place with many possibilities, but I still never expected to see this sentence, not even there: "There are so many warships and cruiseliners in the sea in front of Beirut that it looks like a cross between...
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July 19, 2006
This post by William Arkin is rather interesting. You might want to read the whole thing. In this version of the tale, Hamas and Hezbollah are reduced to almost unimportant dupes of Iran and Syria, Lebanon is just a victimized...
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July 18, 2006
As Lawyers, Guns, and Money notes, some 3100 Iraqi civilians died in June alone. Of course, this is either good news or bad news - depending on your ideological position. The Right Wing will argue that this result is good...
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I'm often not much of a Tony Blair fan, but I'll approvingly note that the British government is going to the rescue of Britons stranded in Lebanon in grand style, sending the fleet flagship and five other warships to do...
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He seems to have lost faith in the administration's faith in democracy, and finds how they prove "success" to be disturbing. Rice called it "shortsighted" to judge the success of the administration's transformational ambitions by a "snapshot" of progress "some...
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July 17, 2006
Yay! For seemingly the first time in weeks there's some good news to report in foreign policy. However just how good this news really is remains to be seen since this accord has "no central organization or headquarters, and little...
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I try not to feed the right-wing loonies that exist in the world wide internet webby thing. There are sufficient blogs to play that game. However, Hugh Hewitt took a dive off the very, very deep end into solid concrete...
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Yeah, some of you will write this off as yet-another "Baltar raving about Bush" post, but I think there is an important point here. According to multiple news sources (I'm using the New York Times), Bush said some interesting things...
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Robert Farley makes some key, basic points about the connections between Iran and Hezbollah here. It's only three paragraphs, but these are key points that we should keep in mind during this crisis. And among the implications of them are...
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July 14, 2006
The race is on. One candidate has stepped forward and formally announced he will be running for the Labour leadership when Tony Blair steps down. And he's not named Gordon Brown. I don't think anyone thinks McDonnell has any chance...
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July 13, 2006
UPDATE: Now Israel is bombing bridges and highways. END UPDATE That's what the Israeli Prime Minister and Lebanese Minister of the Interior are calling it now. Israeli forces struck Beirut's international airport for the second time Thursday, hitting fuel tanks...
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In response to Hezbollah seizing two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, Israel has bombed the Beirut airport, blockaded the Lebanese coast, closed Lebanese airspace, and sent armored columns across the border. What the hell? I'm sorry two Israeli soldiers...
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July 12, 2006
Once again, more evidence for my perpetual lament about the necessity of crafting good laws that are consistent with the Constitution because the stupidity of those who implement them knows no bounds. This time, it's Tucker Carlson who shows us...
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One of the things that annoys me no end with our political system is that we elect someone to be the leader of the free world, give them a level of power that's pretty close to beyond imagination - and...
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July 11, 2006
It's all over the news, and I'm sure we're not the first blog to put it up, but the US government (specifically, the White House via a DoD memo) announced that all detainees worldwide will be treated according to the...
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July 10, 2006
Our knickers would be even more twisty if we had half a clue what was going on over there. Including blacklisting reporters who don't toe the government's line on what's happening in Iraq: But the military has started censoring many...
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Oh, puh-leeze, how can anyone - even Tony Snow - suggest that this presidency's approach to North Korea isn't a debacle, and that President Clinton's was somehow worse (and why would that be remotely relevant in the first place, even...
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July 06, 2006
When it comes to HAMAS it seems this is the rule - If the Palestinians aren't going to elect the people that we want them to elect, why should we support their choice? In fact, we should actively support efforts...
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July 03, 2006
New Seymore Hersh article from the New Yorker is online (here). While it's long, the most interesting stuff is in the first half: the military is really pushing back against Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and their idea of bombing the Iranian nuclear program....
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June 29, 2006
Emphasis mine: Warren Buffett's new philanthropic alliance with fellow billionaire Bill Gates won widespread praise this week, but anti-abortion activists did not join in, instead assailing the two donors for their longtime support of Planned Parenthood and international birth-control programs....
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June 25, 2006
Still catching up on all the fun stuff I missed. Via The Cunning Realist, I read this (warning: pdf) cable/message from Khalilzad to the State Department Headquarters sent last week. It's depressing stuff: among the Iraqi employees of the embassy,...
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June 24, 2006
While I've been away, things do not seem to have changed a great deal (Bad: Iraq, US Soccer, Afghanistan, inflation, heat waves; Good: Bush's approval rating inching up, no actual all-out civil war in Iraq, not much else). However, that...
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June 19, 2006
If you haven't been following the contest that's afoot over who will succeed Kofi Annan, Chapter 15 is your best source for information. Today they have this interesting post on the degree to which this race is about the qualities...
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June 18, 2006
What Kevin says. That demonstrates some savvy foreign policy insight, doesn't it? Turn down an unprecedented offer from Iran when they're weak and we're strong, and then three years later reluctantly agree to much narrower talks when they're stronger and...
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June 15, 2006
Via today's WaPo, we see that Maliki (the new Iraqi Prime Minister) is making a serious attempt at fixing the security situation by both increasing troops (Baghdad is filled with Iraqi police and military) and by political strategy - he...
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June 12, 2006
In case you haven't noticed it amid the coverage of the World Cup, the French Open, the start of hurricane season, and the Steelers' QB's motorcycle accident - it looks like the Palestine Authority is collapsing into civil war, or...
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The Bushadministration/GOP Congress continues to talk-up "democratic reforms" while taking no firm actions against a number of major non-democratic states - in fact, firmly arguing against punishing these opponents of democratic reforms. This is the story again in again in...
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June 11, 2006
The last time a woman was elected to lead the UN General Assembly (1969), Bahrain wasn't even an independent state - but last week a Bahraini diplomat and legal pioneer was elected to lead that body. Haya Rashed al Khalifah...
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May 27, 2006
For our readers interested in Russian politics - 70 people were arrested in Moscow for trying to hold the city's first gay-rights rally.Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said he had banned the march because he believed homosexuality was not natural and...
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The markedly high level of this month's violence in Afghanistan suggests that the power of the Taliban is increasing. Is one reason for this increasing support for the Taliban from Pakistan?...
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May 21, 2006
Who knew? Uh, anyone who's taken my class on the region's politics, anyone who's read most basic, introductory reports or chapters on the nature, workings and composition of the Iranian government ... This post serves as a reminder that when...
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May 15, 2006
While it's far (very, very far) from being a paradise or all one would hope to find in a state, today's move to normalize relations between the US and Libya makes sense. I don't care for Libya's leader, but we...
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May 13, 2006
I may have missed a previous occurance of this, but as far as I know this is the first recorded instance of Iraqi Army units fighting each other. This is bad news. It is, in fact, very bad news. It...
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May 11, 2006
...Russia is engaging in a little signalling: The main themes of Putin's speech were the importance of the Russian army and the need to increase the country's birthrate, calling the persistent population decline one of the most serious problems facing...
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May 08, 2006
I didn't like it, but this (unusually cleverly written) analysis of Tony Blair's reshuffling of his cabinet is devastating. It's well worth your time if you are interested in British politics. And it really makes one wonder - has Blair...
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May 06, 2006
I don't use that word lightly - but since "Grand Ayatollah Sistani recently issued a fatwa on his website calling for the execution of gays in the 'worst, most severe way'" - the Shiite militias (which to all intents and...
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May 05, 2006
A lot of Labourites (and especially Gordon Brown fans) must be pissed today (I mean the American version of "pissed" though maybe that'll lead to them becoming the British version of "pissed"). Prime Minister Tony Blair has carried out the...
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April 30, 2006
Of course the attacks on what judicial independence exists were ugly. But this really puts the nail in the coffin of reform. Egypt's parliament complied with a request from President Hosni Mubarak to extend the country's 25-year old emergency laws...
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April 25, 2006
Marc Lynch has an excellent run-down on the latest incitement from Usama Bin Laden. It's not about Iraq, HAMAS, or Darfur - Bin Laden's focus is much wider. He still seeks to be a "constructivist" actor, fomenting opposition to a...
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April 23, 2006
Oy. What should we make of this column? Borders may be eroding and stateless terrorist groups like al-Qaeda proliferating, but don't be fooled: The traditional state remains the most dangerous force on the international scene. Perhaps the greatest security threat...
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April 22, 2006
Getting 80% of his nominees confirmed shows that the leader of Afghanistan has some strength in parliament and an ability to lead his country. But the nominees who were blocked show the power that extremely conservative religious leaders retain over...
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April 21, 2006
More messages have been coming in about the situation of the protesters arrested in Nepal. Because at least one of them, Madhu, is a friend of a friend, and has been a long standing friend to the U.S. through his...
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April 20, 2006
For those who haven't been following the situation in Nepal, the government imposed a curfew designed to further restrict the freedoms of its opposition. The ongoing strife has been painted by the government as largely controlled by Maoist guerillas, however...
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April 15, 2006
Or not. Ahmadinejad represents Satan Hmmm...there's a point at which rallying your base becomes counter-productive at the international level. This I can buy, actually, though the "madman" bit isn't going to open too many doors: History knew how to denounce...
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April 03, 2006
Sometime over the last three years, Realism died. Realism is the most-widely-accepted (which doesn't make it right, just accepted by more people) theory of international politics. It argues that states are self-interested actors (no matter what their position, power, religion,...
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April 02, 2006
On Juan Cole's site I found these two links. It's entirely predictable that this would happen. But that doesn't make it any less troubling....
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April 01, 2006
Rarely do I take an interest in blog-versus-blog throwdowns, especially when it involves calling out intolerant gasbags on their stupidity. Especially when I'm busy. However, reading Steve Gilliard's post criticizing some of the wingnutosphere's response to Jill Carroll's release reminded...
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March 30, 2006
And people think Israeli politics is all about bombs and violence. Hardly. I imagine it'll be some time before campaign ads in the US look like this....
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March 28, 2006
Not my most favorite SecDef, but he seemed somehow better than most of the rest of the cast of characters that Reagan surrounded himself with.He was 88. WaPo obituary. Of course, his greatest moment was this: And the reply, of...
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March 26, 2006
Given the post on Realism from a few days ago, I thought I'd link to this Steve Clemons post. In it he discusses Secretary Albright's current views on what's going on in the Middle East, and what the US should...
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Jonathan's got a nice, concise post on the politics and mechanics of the national election that Israeli is (finally) having on Tuesday. And for those of you who are into election systems, the first comment is from Matthew Shugat on...
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March 24, 2006
This is big, and potentially a great thing. We've had back-channel communications quite frequently (and Iraq might well be a much more dangerous place right now if we hadn't), but publicly-recognized discussions, no. Iran offered Thursday to enter into talks...
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March 22, 2006
I have really attempted to avoid getting stuck in the silliness that is the debate over the Mearsheimer & Walt article (full pdf version here). The whole debate seems useless to me. Mearsheimer and Walt are both "realists", which is...
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March 20, 2006
WTF!?!?! An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said Sunday....
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Is there a civil war in Iraq? Yes, though it does not immediately threaten the Iraqi Government. Interesting post, and lots of good information....
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March 19, 2006
The latest issue of The Atlantic includes an interesting poll. They asked a large, bipartisan group of experts (practitioners, academics and people who've worked as both) which states they thought would pose the greatest threat to the United States over...
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March 10, 2006
This doesn't happen very often (and when it does, I usually need to think twice to make sure I'm not doing something stupid), but I agree fully with President Bush's position on this whole Dubai port ownership business. President Bush...
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March 04, 2006
Fred Kaplan isn't happy with the president's nuclear proposals with India - and it sees it as a continuation of a distressing pattern.The pattern is hair-raising. In Iraq, Bush & Co. crashed the gates with no plan for what to...
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March 01, 2006
Gosh, tell us how you really feel.President Bush and Osama bin Laden are visiting the same country this week ... If ever there were an unreliable partner, one who says one thing and does another, it is Pakistan ...Pakistan on...
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February 19, 2006
Helena Cobban notes strategies employed by those who want elections - but not a situation in which the people and policies of supported by most of a country's population actually rule....
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First the Prime Minister takes a vow of celibacy, and now this: Critics of Roberto Calderoli, the reforms minister who showed off his T-shirt on television earlier this week, blamed him for the violence — and even his own political...
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February 17, 2006
Here's a snip, but check out the whole thing: DIGGING INTO GUANTANAMO....I'm quite late getting to last week's National Journal cover story about the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, but thanks to Jon Henke at QandO I've now figured...
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February 13, 2006
Not that this is new news, but winning the (smaller) war in Iraq and the (larger) war against fundamentalist Islam will be harder than we thought, and take longer than we want: ...the number of books translated by the whole...
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February 10, 2006
The head of Shin Bet says that the Israelis may miss Saddam Hussein. I repeat, that was said by the head of SHIN BET - in public! Whatever will George Bush and Joe Lieberman say in response? The Liberal Democrats,...
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February 09, 2006
As if more were needed ...That's the implication of this Olivier Roy column, and of course Roy knows vastly more about Islamic politics than Huntington. Roy notes that what we are seeing isn't a "Clash of Civilizations" between the West...
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February 07, 2006
Michael O'Hare remembers a different age - not one necessarily full of cute kittens and snuggly bunnies, but relatively ......
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From the WaPo: Grenier's departure comes at a time when the agency is bleeding top talent, robbing the CIA of institutional memory and damaging morale among case officers and analysts. Since Porter J. Goss became director in September 2004, well...
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February 03, 2006
Richard Holbrooke updates readers on the race to succeed Kofi Annan as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Annan's second (and final) term will end on December 31st....
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February 02, 2006
...and build nukes? Sometimes I wonder about the picture selection at CNN....
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February 01, 2006
When, you know, it comes to oppressing the gays. I guess there are some times when the president is damn happy it's "held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and oppressing its people" (to use the president's...
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January 31, 2006
I mean if neither I nor my graduate students is that suprised, we are in a seriously fucked-up mess if our Secretary of State was taken by surprise by HAMAS's victory. Sadly (for the lives and interests of Americans), it's...
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January 30, 2006
While it's always good to now that foreign heads of state have taken abstinence pledges, it's also nice to move away from the celebutainmet of CNN now and again to see what the grownups consider to be the pressing news...
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January 29, 2006
This article is about Haiti, not Mexico, but the old phrase applies. The multi-page (I've linked you to the single page version, not the 11 page version) article dissects the U.S. involvement in Haiti, and how official foreign policy was...
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January 28, 2006
Jeffrey Stacey asks a good question - "Why is the U.S. devoting so much time to an Iran that is ten years away from producing nuclear weapons compared with a rocket-proliferating regime that is now actively producing nuclear bombs?" You...
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January 26, 2006
Discovered on the web: Blue Force, a "blue" state national security blog. Interesting stuff (from whatever direction you come from). For those interested in the subject, Arms and Influence is also good, as well as Armchair Generalist. Also, Crooked Timber...
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WTF!?! I have nothing against gays in high office, but you'd think some people would have a better sense of timing about when to be honest about their sexuality. The Liberal Democrats, the UK's third largest party, are in the...
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January 23, 2006
I hope the people who are charged with making Iran policy in the Bush administration read this piece by Joseph Cirincione. The popular legend about the Israeli bombing isn't accurate - and the facts of that incident are among the...
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January 22, 2006
Throwing around lots of cash and trying to manipulate election results - would we expect anything else of the Bush administration? It's not that I'm necessarily opposed to this operation. But it makes it abundantly clear that it's not the...
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January 19, 2006
"The fundamental character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power."So this is my question to the other members of the Coup (and anyone else who'd like to chime in) - do you think she'd still pass...
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January 18, 2006
Or at least desperately wishing to emulate the Jerry Lewis-lovers (who, the report notes, have what are arguably the most aggressive and successful anti-terrorism policies in Europe)?...
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Now Charles Krauthammer is well known for columns that border somewhere between the inane and nonsensical - but even for him, this is a doozy. He thinks Europeans are weak-willed whiners who ... well, what exactly? He spends the whole...
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January 14, 2006
And as long as I'm linking to posts that have deeply depressing final paragraphs, it seems appropriate to link to this one too. It's not exactly a new thought, but it is one worth remembering. These guys did a miserable...
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January 13, 2006
The original series? Remember the guys with the red suits? And how you'd think, "dude! when they hand you the red suit? run away!" It's getting to be that way with Bin Laden's number three man. Could it be starting...
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Via LiberalServing...
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January 11, 2006
I supported the war. And actually I might well have supported an operation to remove the Taliban from power prior to 9/11. But news like this should remind us all that "regime change" can only solve so much. And just...
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January 08, 2006
Hope not. “I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters,” Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. “That’s why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on,” he said. Goodman...
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January 06, 2006
Chad is a country in central-north Africa. It is also the butt of many jokes in the classes I teach: it has no port, it's poor, it's been invaded by Libya a few times, and it's filled with sand. In...
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December 29, 2005
Via Mikevotes at Born at the Crest of the Empire, a link to this story: Known Islamic militants should be electronically tagged so their movements can be tracked, a regional German interior minister proposed on Wednesday. "This would allow us...
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If you were part of the EU, and you valued freedom and liberty, would you really want Turkey to join the group while this continues?...
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December 21, 2005
Dan Drezner points us to this survey showing that the public opinion about the US in Pakistan is dramatically better, and linked to earthquake relief. For the first time since 9/11, more Pakistanis are now favorable to the United States...
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December 18, 2005
All week I've hoped to have time to write a post rebuking the silly piece of illogical sloganeering that Condi Rice put in last Sunday's Washington Post. Sadly, I've never had the time given how busy things have been at...
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Publius proposes that the recent anti-Israeli tirades by the president of Iran are essentially a Middle Eastern variation on the race-baiting and Ten Commandments thumping tirades of American politicians practicing the "Southern strategy"....
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Sharon hospitalized....
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December 14, 2005
Ariel Sharon must be doing the happy dance in his office (hard to picture, but...) C'mon, how could I not link to a bit of Israeli political analysis containing that line? Yes, it's very hard to picture. But you've...
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December 10, 2005
So just how is that spreadin' democracy in the Middle East thing goin'? In particular, how's it going in the country we give more foreign aid to than all but one other country in the entire world? Throughout the three...
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December 06, 2005
The Conservative Party in the UK has a new leader, David Cameron. He crushed David Davis in the balloting. If I was a Labour Party political strategist I'd be very worried....
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December 03, 2005
Yossi Verter has this interesting observation - Israel's "new" political alignment is really a return to its old political alignment.The political "bang" whose shock waves are still rocking the foundations of the system, has created a new party: Kadima. But...
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This funny bit of sarcasm by Josh Marshall is wrapped around an interesting foreign policy point that is rarely discussed - many of the so-called neocons in the Bush administration who are supposedly so pro-Israli are also pushing for a...
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December 01, 2005
South Africa, which was the first country on Earth to explicitly ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orienation in its constitution, will soon become the first country in Africa to allow same-sex marriages. The country's highest court has given...
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I agree with everything Jonathan Zasloff writes here. The Labor party is better off without Shimon Peres - Peres' considerable accomplishments notwithstanding....
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November 29, 2005
I know that many people are obsessed with Fitzmas and who knew what when and how could Karl Rove and Scooter and Novak and whether Woodward has come full circle from outsider to insider with matching bookend presidential scandals and...
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November 28, 2005
So I was reading about the (possible) impending end of the Paul Martin's government in Canada when I noticed something unexpected. Apparently Canada got a new Governor General in September. She appears to be, judging by her biography, much more...
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November 25, 2005
When last we touched on the hilarious and terrifying political career of Michele Bachmann she was lurking in the bushes, with bodyguards nearby, afraid of the gays. Now, as she runs for Congress (heaven help us), she is taking on...
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November 23, 2005
The intense brawl political brawl between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the conservative establishment in Iran continues. While he has successful dumped hundreds of insiders from key posts and even managed to restructure personnel at ministries as influential as Foreign Affairs,...
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November 22, 2005
OK, so given this US government document from 1995 - do we have to send more US troops into Iraq to kick out our troops who are already there? I mean if one of our justifications for the war was...
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November 21, 2005
It's finally happened. Jonathan provides a concise analysis of the implications of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon leaving the Likud here. The key thing I think we need to watch for at this point is whether or not Sharon can...
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November 16, 2005
As this has been a topic at Bloodless before, I thought it worth finally noting the official end-of-2005 tallies: The Department of Defense this week announced the Army missed its fiscal 2005 recruiting goal by more than 6,600 soldiers, bringing...
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Plus ça change ..."... others had some of the skin peeled off their bodies by their abusers"Thousands of Americans (and vastly more Iraqis) are dead - and this is what we get? These are the people we've spent hundreds of...
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November 14, 2005
In addition to being big on IR around here, we are also big on history. It seems like the last couple of years have given us ample opportunity to quote Santayana: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to...
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November 08, 2005
Article 16 [State of Emergency] (1) When the institutions of the Republic, the independence of the nation, the integrity of its territory, or the fulfillment of its international commitments are under grave and immediate threat and when the proper functioning...
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November 07, 2005
I realize this isn't really new news to anyone who reads the papers, but it looks like twenty plus years of French immigration policy is, literally, going up in smoke. At the moment, this is merely interesting (though, of course,...
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Presuming for a moment that Ayman al-Zawahiri really does want Zarqawi to decrease his attacks on Muslims (quite possible, but I don't want to act as if I'm certain of either what Zawahiri is thinking, or of the nature of...
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November 04, 2005
Gosh, who should a patriotic "conservative" American pull for in this debate - the popular MP who's likely to soon lead the Conservative Party who wants to make Ecstasy somewhat less illegal, or the Labourite Home Secretary who's defending stringent...
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November 03, 2005
While the article is 24 hour old, it remains important. Yesterday the Washington Post reported: The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S....
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November 02, 2005
This is a very troubling move, and perhaps the biggest sign yet that Iran's foreigng policy may be turning sharply to a more confrontational tack under its new president....
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October 27, 2005
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quoted a remark from Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, that Israel "must be wiped out from the map of the world." The president then said: "And God willing, with the force of God behind it,...
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October 24, 2005
The last sentences that are included in this review, by Dan Drezner, of former State Department offical Lawrence Wilkerson's recent broadside against the Bush admininstration would likely raise a lot of eyebrows among those who watch cable TV news. And...
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October 23, 2005
Digby excerpts from the Scowcroft piece everyone is talking about: "I'm not a pacifist," he said. "I believe in the use of force. But there has to be a good reason for using force. And you have to know when...
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I hate to tear you away from all the attention that's going to that current national crisis - are Nick and Jessica really going to divorce!?! - but since we at Bloodless Coup think matters of international politics and war...
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October 20, 2005
In the wake of the last vote by MPs on the matter, David Cameron and David Davis have emerged as the final pair who will fight for the leadership of the United Kingdom's Conservative Party. Party members will get their...
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October 18, 2005
And then there were three. The Conservative MPs have shortened the list of men who are competing for their party's leadership from four to three. The results: David Davis 62, David Cameron 56, Liam Fox 42, Kenneth Clarke 38. The...
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October 17, 2005
I'll probably discuss this topic a number of times this week since the four remaining candidates will be reduced to two by Thursday. Personally, I think that if the Conservatives want a leader who will take the party forward, maintain...
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October 16, 2005
Salman Rushdie has written an essay asking how Turkey can send its greatest writer to jail and still be considered for membership in the EU. If you don't know what's going on, it involves public remarks made by the widely...
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Crown Prince Frederick and Crown Princess Mary have had a son. He'll likely be named Christian. Apparently Australian butchers and bakers are very excited. And if this news isn't thrilling enough for those of you who can't get enough news...
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October 15, 2005
I'm guessing that this will get a fair bit of attention in the news next week. It could be leading up to a US war against another country, and that's not exactly a minor matter. But then again with Rove,...
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October 14, 2005
Since I posted on it earlier, I think I would be remiss if I didn't note that there several posts on the web questioning it's authenticity. Here's Juan Cole's take on this question (He says that his intuition, the language,...
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October 13, 2005
Given that we are at war in the region, and that there is often discussion of the US directly confronting Syria itself, you'd think this would be getting more news coverage. Helena Cobban discusses what Kanaan's death might mean here.UPDATE:...
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October 12, 2005
Justin Logan notes that the Zawahiri-Zarqawi letter seems to imply that Zawahiri isn't in league with the Iranians. I'd go further than that and say that his excerpt implies a considerable fear of Iran. Read the whole letter here....
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October 10, 2005
From Sunday's Washington Post: "Saudi Arabian and Jordanian officials, at the urging of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, have called on Sunni politicians in Iraq to stick with negotiations until Monday, Iraqi and U.S. officials said. Iraqi lawmakers say Monday is...
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October 07, 2005
Caught this a few days ago at Intel Dump: The elections were a huge financial and logistical challenge which Afghanistan could not have done by itself. The total cost was upwards of $149 million dollars, and it required 1,247 donkeys,...
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October 06, 2005
More recommended reading, on constructivism in IR theory. I recommended part of this debate to Baltar a while ago, but continue to follow the discussion about constructivist theory (especially as I am engaged in some myself). For the uninitiated, constructivism...
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October 05, 2005
Via War and Piece, and posted without comment: WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Relations between the Department of Homeland Security and some key big-city and state police forces have sunk to a new low, CQ Weekly reports. The magazine's "Spy...
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September 29, 2005
Via War and Piece, comes this little nugget of bureaucratic craziness: Republican members of Congress say there are signs that the Defense Department may be carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the...
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September 25, 2005
Comparing Iraq to Viet Nam has become common, and I imagine after yesterday's protest marches in Washington and around the world we'll be hearing it more and more (as in "not since Viet Nam has the nation seen as many...
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September 22, 2005
What, Madeline Albright wasn't there? We've talked about it before but this time Billmon beat me to it. This time last year I had a conversation with a hard-line Bush supporter about this issue, and I suggested that this administration...
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September 21, 2005
I realize Katrina and Rita have eaten up most of the bandwidth in the politicowebblogosphere, but there remains an Iraqi problem. While I don't have anything new to say (situation: bad), there are some interesting posts at IntelDump and Belgravia...
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September 19, 2005
I look forward to Sen. Norm Coleman and the others who've been calling for stricter oversight of UN finances in light of financial impropieties in Iraq seriously investigating this bit of stunning mismanagement....
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September 18, 2005
Jonathan Edelstein has this discussion of a fascinating decision by the Israeli Supreme Court. The Court has set down new guidelines for the buidling of the West Bank security fence, guidelines that will require changes from the government's original plans,...
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Kristof asks what we should call these countries: The United States, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iran, Syria and Venezuela The Axis of Medieval, of course. It was our own Axis of Medieval, and it reflected the feckless response of President Bush to...
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Or so it appears at the moment. Whether or not they can create coalitions to govern their country, given their very small margins of victory, remains to be seen.New Zealand's national elections appear to have set the stage for another...
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September 15, 2005
Juan Cole has this post on an extremely deadly day in Iraq. Eric Martin wonders here if this is a result of a change of heart by Bin Laden and/or Zarqawi about targeting Shiites in Iraq....
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September 13, 2005
Oil-rich Norway will soon see a change in government as the center-right government has been defeated in national elections by a "red-green" alliance. Jens Stoltenberg will be the new prime minister. His priorities? - "We will use Norway's great opportunities...
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September 09, 2005
I had no idea that this was still going on. But I guess since the parliament still hasn't voted on it ......
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September 08, 2005
Over at Abu Aardvark we get this discussion of a recent study done by Marc Tessler:The only independent variables significantly correlated with support for terrorism were "negative views of U.S. foreign policy" and - and here's the interesting part -...
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August 30, 2005
Didn't see this coming. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has endorsed former Prime Minister Shimon Peres for the Labor party leadership. Peres is facing a number of challengers in his bid to remain head of the party. Those challengers...
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August 29, 2005
George Bush's plan to make Iraq into an authoritarian, theocratic Islamic state in which people (especially secular professionals and, among others, Christians) live in constant fear of being tortured and killed by murderous government agents continues to meet with great...
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August 27, 2005
Ampersand alerts us to a deliciously scathing piece in The Guardian. It seems that the challenger to New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark is blaming his poor performance in an election debate on the fact that he had to debate...
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August 26, 2005
The Guardian tells us the number of shots fired at Jean Charles de Menezes is now "correctly" stated at eleven. Eleven....
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August 25, 2005
Pervez confirms that Khan helped out North Korea. How do you suppose Dear Leader feels about Khan? How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can...
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Via the New York Times, we get the initial rumblings of the avalanche that is to come: BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 25 - The National Assembly today called off a meeting that was scheduled to decide on the draft constitution, the...
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August 24, 2005
Everyone else has been on this bandwagon for awhile now, but I couldn't touch it for fear of boiling over: “Women’s social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they’re there, I think they will be...
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August 23, 2005
I realize that democracy may not be necessay to achieve the minimal set of goals for the US in Iraq, but I'm not sure we're making out job any easier by not even pretending to be democratic: The head of...
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You know, it's easier that way: You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [Hugo Chavez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a...
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August 21, 2005
"Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's...
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No, not here (or not just here). I mean in Iraq. Perhaps they are just trying to get a constitution - any constitution - agreed to. Or perhaps they just want a bigger role for religion (any religion) in government....
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August 20, 2005
The public opinion polls on Iraq have shrunk to all-time lows, and the American Public is getting antsy about how, when, and where this whole Iraq adventure will come to some sort of conclusion. Kevin Drum, over at Washington Monthly,...
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August 19, 2005
When we hear of religious leaders staking out public positions in the politics of Arab countries, most people think of leading Islamic figures pushing for the support of certain policies or political leaders - but of course Christian leaders do...
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August 18, 2005
When Tony Blair created the latest batch of life peers I overlooked the fact that Andrew Adonis was among them. I'm certainly not disparaging his title, but could any man really live up to being known as "Lord Adonis". Well,...
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August 14, 2005
Not the first Mr. Afghanistan!...
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August 13, 2005
While craning my neck to see the wreckage as I drove by, I mean, while reading CNN this afternoon, I saw this headline: "Bush: Force last resort on Iran" and thought, huh, maybe he will be sensible about this after...
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August 11, 2005
Why is no one talking about this? I guess Pakistan test firing cruise missiles, and giving India a big "fuck you" isn't big news (it's buried in the international section on the NYT, and I couldn't find it on CNN)....
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In case you weren't already depressed about the end of summer, here's some more good news from Iraq. First, the mayor of Baghdad has been ousted in a "municipal coup d'etat" and replaced by a member of a Shiite militia....
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August 09, 2005
Some of it has to with translation, of course, but Hugo Chavez continues the tradition of Communists have the best (read: strange) propaganda. From these statements at a world youth conference in Venezuela: ...Chavez said late Monday that the U.S....
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August 08, 2005
Damn those book-writing career CIA officers! [I]n a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of...
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Regular readers know I have a love/hate relationship with CNN. I ridicule their infotainment style, but can't resist checking in to see what new frivolity vies for headline space with important world events. It's not to "Bat Boy" levels yet,...
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August 03, 2005
There are many stories today about the 14 marines killed by a "huge bomb" in Iraq. If you haven't been here, they keep the most accessible running tally of casualties for the US and other actors, including for Iraqi police...
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August 02, 2005
Daniel Weintraub gets at some of the fundamentals of the current political climate affecting international trade in this column. He starts off noting that the widow of Rep. Bob Matsui, long the leading champion of free trade among the Democrats...
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August 01, 2005
Have you heard that the United States is no longer engaged in a global War on Terror? No, really! We have a new and improved product for sale, limited time only: the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. G-SAVE bargain price,...
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July 31, 2005
I suppose that by many historical standards perhaps the biggest event to ever happen on July 31 was the Mamluk victory at Acre that ended the Crusades in 1291. After 6 formal crusades, and a number of informal ones, the...
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July 25, 2005
But it's not who you think. Apropos of Baltar's post below, Marc Lynch brings us this discussion of the present state of things in the Constructivist/Realist "debate" that has been a prominent part of discussions of international relations theory for...
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The man shot five times at point blank range on the subway in London turns out to be a Brazilian electrician. O Globo (registration required, in Portuguese) reports that the electrician had overstayed his visa. In addition the police are...
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July 24, 2005
One of the debates among international affairs scholars relates to the "polarity" of the world; how the number of big, important states with global reach affects the politics of the globe. We're right now in a "unipolar" world (only the...
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Via CNN, we get two interesting statements. The first one: "'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today...
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Matt Davis has the obvious answer. And yeah, I realize it's in poor taste to joke about this - but's it's also rather horrifying that the president of the United States spreads a line like that to a citizenry that,...
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Massive riots with deadly results hit Yemen this week. Marc Lynch notes one entirely predictable result: "Yemeni authorities yesterday demonstrated that one of the new but already timeless laws of Arab politics still applies: when trouble hits your country... arrest...
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July 22, 2005
I'm rather at a loss for words about this. Of course Iran isn't the only place on Earth where you can be killed for being gay. Far from it. But it's still rather striking to see the killings formally carried...
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Posted by armand at
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Comments (12)
"Five months after Mubarak announced that Egypt would introduce multi-party presidential elections, it's looking less like a race than ever."So begins Jonathan's latest coverage of the wave of democracy sweeping (or not) across the Middle East....
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This morning, police in London shot and killed a man on the subway. This is the first time ever that I've read about a police shooting or death in London, or in all of England for that matter. The article...
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July 21, 2005
It looks less severe so far, but there were more bombings in London today. This time the explosions seemed minor, only one injury has been reported so far, and the authorities are not treating it as "a major incident yet."...
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July 20, 2005
While we twitter around analyzing every possible aspect of the Roberts nomination and worry what it will mean for the rights of women in the U.S., a couple of items from abroad on the position of women: First, from Uganda,...
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July 09, 2005
Given the fact that several states in Nigeria have adopted horrifying, reactionary religious legal codes I'd advise you not to go there and engage in sodomy, or, if you are a woman, sex outside of marriage. If you do -...
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July 08, 2005
Do you think this is the sort of ally the Bush team wanted to be taking a lead role in assisting in the reconstruction of Iraq?...
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July 07, 2005
Jonathan has the details - it's dominated by members of the Hariri faction, and for the first time in history Hizbollah is part of the government....
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I think Dan Drezner is being too hyperbolic in this generally quite insightful post on the Democratic Party and CAFTA. Is it troubling for trade-supporting Democrats like me that only 5 members of the Democratic caucus in the US House...
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July 06, 2005
Armchair Generalist makes a good point in this post that addresses the heavy losses that have been suffered by both Americans and Afghanis in the operations that have been carried out in an attempt to rescue a missing SEAL reconnaissance...
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June 26, 2005
OK, the fact that this post is by Juan Cole means that everyone who's remotely sympathetic to the president won't take it seriously - but Cole raises some fair points, whether or not the Go Bush Go! chorus chooses to...
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This is not the best of times to be an American student studying abroad. And remember that Australia is among our closest allies on Iraq and other issues. In other countries the anti-US abuse is worse....
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June 21, 2005
The Christian Science Monitor has this article which makes some predictions about what will happen now that the final round of elections in Lebanon has come to an end. They persist in viewing politics there in pro-Syrian and anti-Syrian terms,...
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June 20, 2005
Abu Aardvark discusses Secretary Rice's recent comments on democratization in Egypt and Jordan here. While he's largely pleased about what she said in Egypt, he's concerned that she's letting Jordan off too lightly. Steven R. Weisman has an article on...
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June 18, 2005
The Cunning Realist has a good (if distressing) post on our (apparent) inaction in the face of the latest disturbing move by the Saudi government....
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No one came close to getting 50% in the 7 candidate race for president, so there will be a run-off between the top two finishers on Friday June 24. It will be the first run-off of its kind in Iran....
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June 17, 2005
Millions of women and men are going to the polls today to vote for that country's new president. While we have many substantive problems with that country's policy preferences, and while we (and the vast majority of Iranians) wish they...
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Jonathan notes a fascinating piece of news from Israel. As a result of the recruitment drives that have been held in the run-up to the leadership election scheduled for the 28th of this month, Arabs now make up 22% of...
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June 15, 2005
It's surprising that neither Baltar nor Armand has jumped on this wagon yet, but in the brief moment that I am connected to a computer on what has become a longer than planned summer hiatus, I will shoot off a...
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June 14, 2005
Nick Kristof makes a proposal to President Bush that I think a lot of Americans would support: "Mr. Bush, how about asking Mr. Musharraf to focus on finding Osama, instead of kidnapping rape victims who speak out?"But of course if...
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June 12, 2005
...Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier. The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s...
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June 10, 2005
Your president has resigned and the head of your Supreme Court has taken over in a caretaker capacity - what do you do? "Demonstrators in La Paz have been celebrating by setting off thunderous charges of dynamite."...
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June 07, 2005
$674 million is nice and all, but it's obviously a complete and rather sick joke if the idea is to actually solve anything in the long term. I'm quite impressed by Blair's actions on issues like this, and have been...
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June 06, 2005
The Swiss have approved civil partnerships for gays and lesbians. In and of itself that's still a pretty unusually occurrence on this planet. But what's particularly remarkable is that they approved this in a national referendum, and that the proposal's...
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So if President Bush is responsible for the supposed big wave of democracy sweeping the Middle East (not really there of course - but I guess I'm in too much of a "reality based" mindset), does that mean he's also...
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May 29, 2005
So while she implies things could be going better, she's pleased that at least the Iraqis haven't written slavery into their constitution like we did. Of course they don't even have a constitution yet. But presuming they get around to...
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May 27, 2005
Yup. Honest. It's true. And really not all that surprising. While a lot of Americans, particularly those on the right, see much of the Arab press as hopelessly anti-American, it's more complicated than that. If there's one thing that many...
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Since it's published in a purely academic journal and almost certainly would escape the attention of most of you, I thought I would take a moment to mention a new article by David Sobek in the June 2005 issue of...
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Of course assuming you're not a shill for the Bush administration, you already knew that. This piece by Sarah Chayes from Thursday is well worth reading. One basic point it contains is something many bloggers have noted this week. Given...
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May 24, 2005
Just I heard Secretary Rice calling them the biggest impediment to democracy in the region. I look forward to her next speech in which she'll no doubt praise the mullahs for this move. I mean c'mon she was just praising...
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May 23, 2005
Well, that didn't take long. The CDU wins in North Rhine-Westphalia, the German Chancellor is suddenly planning early elections, and profiles of Angela Merkel (Chancellor Schroeder's likely opponent) are quickly updated. Meet the woman who may be the next Chancellor....
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May 22, 2005
It seems appropriate that someone named "gall" is in the by-line on this story. US officials don't think Hamid Karzai (the guy we put in power after the Russians and Iranians signed off on him) isn't doing enough to eradicate...
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May 20, 2005
It's not that this kind of report should be viewed as all that new or surprising, but I'm linking to this because I think it's extremely important that we don't forget 1) what Americans are complicit in (or at least...
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May 19, 2005
It's getting bloodier. Much bloodier. The senior officer who met with reporters in Baghdad said there had been 21 car bombings in the capital in May, and 126 in the past 80 days. All last year, he said, there were...
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May 18, 2005
Yeah, the whole controversy about the president's bizarre remarks dealing with the Yalta Conference has largely died down, but that doesn't mean that the disagreements over whether much was "lost" at Yalta have. Those fights have been going on for...
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May 17, 2005
Indeed, the 30-something former President and CEO of Magna International may very well have. This is a shock. Just last year she was competing against Stephen Harper for leadership of the Conservative Party. Now she's in the Liberal cabinet....
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South Korea has made a new, secret proposal to North Korea in an attempt to get negotiations to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program back on track. This is potentially important news, all the more so coming on the heels of...
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May 16, 2005
Sort of. And of course it remains entirely possible that that lovely regime we protect could just suspend the elected parliament entirely. But hey, women can now vote in certain elections for some somewhat unstable representative (well, kind of) institutions....
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May 15, 2005
Well, how about that. I wonder how many other Iranian spies that steal from little old ladies the president will personally lobby to have pardoned? Gee, and I was thinking that after executing all those Texans he was a tough...
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May 10, 2005
He's put together an awfully appealing team, or at least a team with a lot of potential. We'll see if whomever will soon replace him as party leader can equal this feat. George Osborne, 33, is the new Shadow Chancellor...
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Jennifer Loven reports here on a speech made by President Bush over the weekend in Latvia. Looking beyond obvious lines that I imagine would lead many Americans to cringe - say, that the US is willing to commit the lives...
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May 09, 2005
I think sometimes people my age or a bit older put too much faith in the "special relationship". After all the personal relationships between Clinton and Blair and Thatcher and Reagan were unusually strong, and that no doubt had an...
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More than 1,000 American troops supported by fighter jets and helicopter gunships attacked villages on Sunday in and around Obeidi, a city near the Euphrates not far from the Syrian border, an embedded correspondent of The Chicago Tribune reported today....
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May 07, 2005
Looks a lot like his old cabinet. The holders of the big 3 posts kept their jobs. But deeper down the list of ministers it is apparent that many of the allies of Chancellor (and presumed next Prime Minister) Gordon...
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May 04, 2005
It's soooo easy to knock him about, how can you resist? In today's latest bit of wasted column inches in the nation's supposedly most august newspaper he concludes: The bad guys won't win, but neither will the good guys, and...
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May 02, 2005
The Guardian links to an interesting power point presentation on the issue dimensions that are most powerful in the UK at the moment. Don't forget - their national elections are coming up on Thursday....
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Think the president will have anything to say about Sharansky's resignation?...
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April 30, 2005
Ugh. There are days when I am disgusted by close to everything relating to the Saudi government and how the Bush administration deals with them. Those are the days that end in "d-a-y"....
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April 28, 2005
I'm not sure where things stand in Iraq, but if these are the numbers put out by the Pentagon (which you would think would be the source most likely to be cautious in their reporting) it doesn't look to me...
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April 17, 2005
So does this make the Republicans in DC more or less supportive of bombing them? It's an interesting story, and of course it points out how off-base many people's perceptions of Iran are. And of course it also goes to...
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April 16, 2005
It's bad enough that they hide their own heads in the sand, but apparently they want to force our heads down there to. I suppose they just want us happily exist in the dark singing tra-la-la to ourselves and avoid...
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April 14, 2005
I see that Armand has, with vim and vigor, torn Brooks a new one. Brooks succeeded in irritating me with his column as well, and I thought I'd elevate my comments to a new post rather than tag on Armand....
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Ugh. For something that wants to be the paper of record, The New York Times sure does print a lot of columns that are more useful at the bottom of a birdcage than they are at seriously considering the issues...
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April 11, 2005
Via Laura Rozen I found this report by Karl Vick in The Washington Post. This is simply astounding. Turkey is a NATO ally. Traditionally we've had pretty good ties (though the 1990-1991 Gulf War and its aftermath put a strain...
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Posted by armand at
10:43 AM
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Comments (10)
April 09, 2005
Apparently there's at least one less than we thought. I don't know which is sadder though - that the Army does such lousy PR work, or that the reporter was happy to be used as a shill for a would-be...
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April 08, 2005
Jeanne d'Arc has an enlightening post building upon a piece in the WSJ. It's clear that our expectations of what constituted abusive treatment of prisoners were different - stunningly, gigtanticly, titanicly different - back during an era when it was...
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April 07, 2005
This article by Edmund Sanders in the Los Angeles Times covers the maelstrom that is local politics in Iraq. This is an interesting report for several reasons, but one of its deeply unsettling moments involves Basra:One of the most surprising...
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April 06, 2005
With the death of Prince Rainier, Monaco has a new leader for the first time in 55 years. Since I was wondering if the old rules still applied and that Monaco would revert to France if the new ruler, Prince...
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March 29, 2005
Iraq, close to two months since the election, continues to muddle along without any form of government. I realize this isn't really news to anyone, but I did think it worth pointing out. Some highlights: Prominent politicians also said in...
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March 28, 2005
Since we haven't put up any links to the current situation in Iraq just recently I thought I'd link to Juan Cole's daily review of news in the region. There are links to many more stories embedded in this post.Cole...
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March 27, 2005
This is interesting. Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, "They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why...
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Less than 24 hours after I wrote this post on my general disgust at the decision by the Bush administration to sell advanced military technology to a nuclear weapons-proliferating military dictatorship that has many terrorists inside its borders comes this...
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March 26, 2005
"The president's decision reversed 15 years of policy begun during the administration of his father. The United States barred the sale of F-16s to Pakistan in 1990 out of concern over its then-undeclared nuclear arms program ..." But now that...
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March 24, 2005
Via Juan Cole I noticed this story from El Pais: The U.S. high command ordered the closing of the Sharia courts set up by the Shiite clergy in Najaf to run the city in accordance with Islamic law.The U.S. Provisional...
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March 21, 2005
You wouldn't think it's possible. And you don't want it to be possible. But apparently, yes, he is/was. From an article by William J. Broad and David Sanger in the New York Times today: Nuclear investigators from the United States...
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March 20, 2005
Between this, the multitude of misinformation they spread about Iraq, the spying, the insulting people he appoints to high diplomatic offices ... if you were the leader of a country, would you want to work with the Bush administration? Would...
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March 16, 2005
Abu Aardvark updates us on King Abdullah's trip to the United States. Sadly, President Bush, supposed friend of freedom and democracy, did an appalling, truly abysmal, job of putting any public pressure on the king to support reforms. I'm not...
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Comes via John Lumpkin of the AP. If things hold to form we'll learn that these numbers, the highest released yet, include notably fewer deaths than the total number of prisoners that have actually died violently while in US custody....
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Kemal Dervis would have been an excellent choice. Bono was already out of the running. Angelina Jolie's recommendation of Colin Powell apparently didn't carry much weight at the White House. The White House had already decided to quash current World...
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March 12, 2005
Kenneth Gregg reminds us of the anniversary of one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century, and, it could be argued, American history.I presume there will be at least a feature or two on the anniversary of the atomic...
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March 11, 2005
For a self-professed novice on the subject, Jonathan Edelstein has put together a fine introduction to Lebanese politics. If you want to know the system, a bit of the history, and the current players you should check it out. Lebanese...
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Via Josh Marshall I learn of this. Now it's not that I am completely opposed to Congress having a role in setting US foreign policy. But at this particular moment when the administration is supposedly working to change the relationship...
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March 08, 2005
Yet another difference between the US and the UK (there might be a "special relationship", but in terms of government and politics there are oh so many differences) - a major political party places the defense of civil liberties at...
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Abu Aardvark and Jonathan have some interesting thoughts on today's protests organized by Hizbollah in Lebanon. While change is certainly coming to that country, the direction it will take is far from clear, and actions like today's show that in...
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March 07, 2005
The president is naming John Bolton to be our new ambassador to the UN? Is this some kind of sick joke? I mean if he doesn't like the UN, or doesn't think it works well or that we should be...
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March 03, 2005
Per the Washington Post (today), we see (perhaps) the true cost of Abu Ghraib and other associated "problems" in the wars on terror and Iraq: China accused the United States on Thursday of using double standards to judge human rights...
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March 01, 2005
While it is really hard to predict where these events will take us, it's clear that exciting changes are taking place in Lebanon. That said, I'm still very curious about killed Hariri and the others. If we knew that, we...
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February 26, 2005
President Mubarak's call to open up this year's presidential elections in Egypt is quite a surprise, and, if you like the idea of spreading democracy in the Middle East, you've got to give the Bush administration credit for the pressure...
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February 25, 2005
If you are interested in press freedom and/or the content of television coverage in the Middle East you should check out this piece in The Economist. It gets at two constants that greatly limit the impact of the media in...
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February 23, 2005
Douglas Farrah notes the unexpected people who win contracts to bring humanitarian aid to Darfur....
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February 21, 2005
Helena Cobban notes the commendable self-restraint shown by Shiites in the wake of the Ashoura attacks in Iraq. Given the highly unstable nature of what's going on in Iraq right now, it really is remarkable - and perhaps something for...
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February 18, 2005
Perhaps John Negroponte is the best man for the "Intelligence Czar" job. I won't hold my breath (he has no background in creating and managing intelligence, though he is clearly a consumer of it). It should also be noted that...
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February 17, 2005
While acknowledging that the United States does not know who was behind the Monday bombing that killed the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, Ms. Rice said Syria should be held at least indirectly responsible, "given their continued interference in...
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February 15, 2005
Tim Cavanaugh offers this praise of the Lebanese leader who was killed, along with a dozen others, in a car bomb attack yesterday. If anyone wants to offer theories on the causes or effects of this assassination, here's a thread...
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February 14, 2005
Hmmm. Is this exactly what Team Bush had in mind? Hundreds of billions spent, all the deaths, injuries and destruction, anatgonism against the United States at record levels in many places of the world, and we get a government controlled...
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February 13, 2005
While I hadn't thought of it in terms of exactly the string of connections Matt Yglesias brings up here - he's largerly spot on. These elections do make Abdullah look good in US eyes, while also making clear that the...
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February 12, 2005
If you are interested in a succinct review of the likely behavior of Iraq's Kurds in the wake of the January 30 elections, Forbes.com has a good update. As the article notes, the Kirkuk issue is key, and it will...
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February 10, 2005
OK, for any of you who might know more about the royal family and titles than I do ... If Camilla is going to eventually become the Princess Consort, and if she's going to already get the HRH moniker as...
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February 08, 2005
Can't you just feel the winds of democracy and freedom blowing across the Middle East! Wasn't it great when we installed democracy in Kuwait? Oh, what? We didn't? We put an oil-rich autocrat back on the throne? Huh. Odd that....
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February 02, 2005
Read the following paragragh. As you are reading, replace the words in the original text with words referring to our actions in Iraq: Replace "Kennedy Administration" with "George W. Bush Administration" Replace "Eisenhower" with "Clinton" Replace "Asia" with "the Middle...
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January 25, 2005
As I've argued before, the continued fighting in Iraq is making it harder and harder for the US military to recruit and retain the numbers needed to fight this war. USA Today ran some numbers today (two separate stories: here,...
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January 18, 2005
Drezner has an interesting post commenting on a Financial Times article about Rice's reshaping of the State Department. He generally approves (less neo-cons, more realists, in his opinion). What is interesting, for us IR people, is that Stephen Krasner (that...
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January 10, 2005
Andrew Sullivan alerts us to the fact that Stratfor deems the war over - and lost....
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What Matt says: "Put a man with lots of death squad experience in charge of your counterinsurgency, and you tend to wind up with death squads."...
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January 09, 2005
Stanley Fischer, Vice Chairman of Citigroup, former chief economist at the World Bank, and possibly best known in international economic circles from his years at the IMF, has been on the short-lists for a host of major economic posts in...
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January 02, 2005
Kuwait's Information Minister is resigning because of complaints that he's not doing enough to enforce censorship - against Western ideas. Don't you just love the kind of people Americans have to risk their lives to keep in power just because...
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December 28, 2004
This article in The New York Times reminds us that when it comes to spreading WMD Iraq had nothing on our close friend and ally, Pakistan. We still don't know how deep the damage is - and we are getting...
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December 23, 2004
Josh Marshall notes a bizarre statement by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Those same insurgents sure get around....
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December 21, 2004
Via Helena Cobban. She calls it the Serbia "smart sanctions" policy. It looks to me like it has much to recommend it. Military options, even if they were a good idea (they are not), aren't possible given current circumstances. Still,...
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Jonathan has these thoughts on what the new coalition means for politics and policy in Israel....
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This piece in The Financial Times reminds us that many warriors are learning all manner of battle-related skills in Iraq, and even if Iraq suddenly becomes quiet and safe, many of those people will likely remain in the region. What...
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December 20, 2004
That was the message a congressional delegation got there recently. Many of these concerns are shared by governments around the world, and the "if you don't want to work with us, why should we work with you?" response our policy...
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December 14, 2004
Helena Cobban brings us this shockingly honest exchange involving the comments of two titans of the foreign policy establishment....
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December 10, 2004
This Helena Cobban post has a link to photos of some of the dead. I'm linking to this post instead of the photos directly so you'll have a little context on their origins....
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December 08, 2004
Jonathan has this enlightening post on the use of settlers to achieve political gains....
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December 06, 2004
One of the things that I've found interesting about the attacks by the insurgents is that even in the face of massive levels of killings of Iraqis by Iraqis, the US is still seen by many (especially in central Iraq)...
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December 03, 2004
King Abdullah has sacked his half-brother Hamza as Crown Prince. Abu Aardvark has the story and thoughts on its meaning here, here and here.Why should Jordanian royals matter to the US? This matters given US interest in Israeli politics and...
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December 01, 2004
Today is world AIDS day. It's not on the home page of the New York Times, or CNN, but you can find a post at Crooked Timber with links to several stories in the international press. Normally it's hard to...
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November 27, 2004
I hope that democracy wins the day in Ukraine, and I think it's great to see the interest from around the world (especially Europe) in supporting that cause. Now, if only the recent backwards moves (following a good deacde of...
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November 26, 2004
The appeals are done, the US has lost, and the WTO has authorized initial penalities against the US of $150 million for the "Byrd Amendment" (fathered by the West Virginia senator who's one of the country's most outspoken opponents of...
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November 24, 2004
The more I think about it, the more I think that Juan Forero's New York Times story (in the November 18, 2004 edition) on union leaders in Colombia may have been the most important story in the last week to...
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November 18, 2004
While I certainly have no knowledge of whether the Mosque shooting was valid or not, I can comment more accurately on the hew and cry of the videotape in this country. While there seems to be mostly good debate over...
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November 15, 2004
Matt Yglesias reminds us that it's hard to combine Iraq's multiethnic situation and its vast oil reserves into a functioning democratic political system....
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November 12, 2004
In a shocking turn of events (as if) Bavaria has become the latest German state to ban school teachers from wearing Muslim headscarves. Christian and Jewish symbols in the classroom? Those are fine.You know if governments are going to follow...
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November 09, 2004
You should usually read Fred Kaplan's articles - but you should really make a point to read this one. Calling this "a shot in the dark" might be extreme, but given the level of the rebellion (or insurgency or whatever...
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Yesterday Phil Carter made an important point when he noted that he (and others) believe that the Bush White House is fighting a war on terrorism - but is committing a terrible error in that they are judging progress in...
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November 07, 2004
"The re-election of Israel's enemy." Yeah, that made me do a double-take too. But given that's a column by Gideon Levy in Ha'artez it's understandable. Basically, he's saddened that the US reelected someone who's going to continue to give Prime...
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So hot on the heels of the news of the massive looting of explosives from Al Qaqaa, and the news that the explosives looted from there comprise just a tiny fraction of the explosives missing in Iraq, comes this story....
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November 06, 2004
Apparently the Dutch are going to pull their troops out of Iraq by the spring. That means that in just the last few weeks we've lost the military support of 3 NATO allies - the Netherlands, Poland and Hungary....
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November 04, 2004
That is a question that's likely to be debated a great deal in some circles. Blood and Treasure links to a story noting that long-time hold-out Norway is now more likely to join the European Union....
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While the Blair government has firmly supported US action in Iraq, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said that he doesn't see "any circumstance in which military action would be justified against Iran"....
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Following a US request that would allow it to free up some of its own troops in central Iraq, the British moved 850 Black Watch soldiers to Camp Dogwood. They arrived last Friday. Already 3 have been killed, and there...
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November 03, 2004
Following on the heels of Poland, fellow NATO member Hungary announces it is going to pull its troops out of Iraq....
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October 31, 2004
Yes, that would be quite a change of pace in deeply secular France. But French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, soon to take over the ruling party of French President Jacques Chirac, is advocating such a change in an effort to...
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Publius makes that case here....
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October 30, 2004
Is anyone else a little taken aback at the content of the tape? I mean much of it is predictable - Americans: stop backing Israel and killing Muslims or we're going to fill your streets with blood no matter who...
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October 27, 2004
Flexing its ever-growing political muscle the European Parliament has refused to approve the European Commission proposed by incoming EU Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso. While this fight was originally over the conservative Italian who had been proposed to take...
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October 26, 2004
Well, that failed miserably. Am I the only one who sometimes wonders how Netanyahu continues to be Likud's bright light of the future (yes, again) when as the article states he has such a long record of demeaning himself and...
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October 21, 2004
Following a request by the Bush administration, the British have agreed to redeploy 850 of their troops in central Iraq. The troops will remain under a British general, though they will be under tactical American command. They will be there...
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It's stories like this one that leave me flabbergasted when people try to make the argument that Kerry will be worse for trade than Bush will. I suppose it's possible. But President Bush has set such a low bar over...
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October 20, 2004
Talk about your topics that will be IR specialists in an uproar - I have yet to see fisticuffs break out, but the disagreements between those who think it is and those who think it just represents the interests of...
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October 14, 2004
For those who care, the 81 year old king of Cambodia is stepping down (for real this time, as he has flirted with it in the recent past). According to CNN, "The monarchy, for its part, is seen as a...
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October 13, 2004
This move by Germany looks promising....
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October 12, 2004
Perhaps you've seen the Human Rights Watch report or the media coverage of it that describes the Al Qaeda "ghost detainees" as "disappeared" people. This language is not chosen lightly, and was borne of the repressive military regimes that perpetrated...
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India doesn't seem to be getting its knickers in a twist, so who is the intended recipient of this signal? ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan said Tuesday that it has successfully test-fired a medium-range, nuclear-capable missile that could hit many...
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Just as the Brooks column had me thinking about Hobbes, I wandered over to Crooked Timber and found this post. Seems I am not the only one with Hobbes on the brain. Below the discussion of Hobbes and bribery however,...
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October 01, 2004
This article in The New Statesman looks at the fight within Islam, and attempts by a variety of Muslim groups in South Asia to take it in a more "humanistic" direction. Putting on my "Westerner" hat for a moment I...
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September 30, 2004
Helena Cobban has the details. This is sort of a dog-bites-man story, but it's probably useful to be reminded occasionally of the kinds of things the settlers often get away with....
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September 29, 2004
No, I'm not talking about our country's shocking indifferrence to what happens in our prisons, I'm referring to the title of this troubling Nick Kristof column. I wish we were doing more to try and stop this kind of thing,...
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September 28, 2004
Well, as if getting the Pentagon to fly Chalabi's private army into the area and picking the IGC and the new Prime Minister weren't enough (and of course there are plenty of other examples of us affecting the "choice" of...
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September 26, 2004
Well, as long as you ignore little tidbits like this: "On Wednesday, there were 28 separate hostile incidents in Baghdad, including five rocket-propelled grenade attacks, six roadside bombings and a suicide bombing in which a car exploded at a National...
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September 25, 2004
"Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder....
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This map is both amusing and highly troubling. People who have followed foreign policy decision making in this administration know that the autumn of 2001 is when planning for a war against Iraq really heated up. Given that, and the...
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September 23, 2004
Well, this clears things up: "Celebrity or unknown, our job is to act on information that others have given us," Ridge said. Can I be one of the others? Because I would really like to pass on the information that...
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September 22, 2004
Juan Cole has a thought provoking post comparing what the US would look like if it had the level of violence and insurgency that Iraq has today. Basically, he takes all of the figures for violence and multiplies everything by...
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September 21, 2004
Well, this isn't encouraging. And Brazil? Who knew? How will we deal with these threats? Well according to the article, this is our approach: "This administration's nonproliferation strategy consists of flailing around with a two-by-four," says one disgusted Republican elder...
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Matt Yglesias rightly notes that George Will's latest column shows that not even all fervent Republicans can continually lie about the charade that Iraq is not, at this time, "sovereign". But I think there are two other parts of that...
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September 19, 2004
Generally, bad ideas that potential allies think are doomed to fail aren't a good place to start. Read this Matt Yglesias post. It gets at a key point dealing with situations in which coalitions are NOT likely to form, and...
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Phil Carter analyzes a story by Tom Ricks of the Washington Post (linked to in Carter's piece) on some of the troops who are due to be sent to Iraq. It's yet more evidence that we are over-stretched that this...
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September 16, 2004
And on a lighter note than other recent bloodless fare....for those who are unaware, September 19 is international Talk Like a Pirate Day. There is a website where you can find all kinds of pirate-y goodness, including several name generators....
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The first National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq since the infamous (both for its content and for who didn't read it) October 2002 document has apparently been completed, and the findings are not encouraging....
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I haven't seen any graphics on this for awhile, so if you haven't either and are interested this post has a graphic of the number of American wounded in Iraq by month, and the post also contains a link to...
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September 14, 2004
I think Jonathan's take on this is pretty much on target. That said, I'm very troubled by the fact that if the Israeli government is setting this as the initial bar it's not hard to look into the future and...
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It's like drugs or fast food. I know I shouldn't even walk in the door, but sometimes the temptation is just too great. Like today. I went over to CNN.com, and what did I find? This story about executions for...
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This isn't even a fraction of the damning case that can be made against the administration on this issue. And worse yet, it discusses a song that I'd be happy to never again be reminded of. But nonetheless, it addresses...
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At a certain level this is very funny. At another level, it's definitely not....
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September 13, 2004
OK, so below I noted the high level of bloodshed in Iraq over the weekend. I think I should highlight part of that story - the fact that one of the dead was an al-Arabiya reporter who was killed while...
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Yet another miserable failure brought to you by the Bush White House. Big time. There are certainly times when the civilian leadership should over-rule military recommendations. But when that happens and things go horribly wrong ... I think it's hard...
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80 civilians killed by US and Iraqi forces in one day? Good lord....
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September 11, 2004
This story in Haaretz is interesting, particularly since Armitage is generally considered to be firmly ensconced as Colin Powell's closest ally in the US government (so presumably not on Jim Woolsey or Richard Perle's holiday card mailing lists). In an...
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Kevin Drum writes the following: "Israel has infinitely better intelligence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip than we do in Iraq, and even so they haven't been able to halt the guerrilla warfare and suicide bombings there in 30...
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September 09, 2004
I make no claims that I know the right answer, but I think I know the wrong answer when I see it. The New York Times reported yesterday that the US/Iraqi government/puppets had ceded control over Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and...
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September 07, 2004
The Head Heeb has this interesting analysis of the decision of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP to take part in Palestinian elections that are planned for next spring....
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Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has announced plans to outlaw adultery (though supposedly charges would only be filed if the wife or husband filed a complaint). This is presumably being proposed to please Erdogan's AKP party (the main Islamist party in...
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In some ways Lebanon would seem the Arab state most conducive to the establishment of an independent democracy. But given actions like this one by their foreign minister, they obviously remain far from independent at this time. Lebanon asked the...
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September 06, 2004
We need to do more to fight it. Yesterday I noted one area in which we're moving backward on this. Ronald Bailey notes another area where we need to do more....
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September 05, 2004
That's a long title for a post, I realize. But this deserves attention. President "I'll keep America safe" (at least AFTER 9/11) Bush scuttles one of the best prospects we have for keeping tabs on nuclear proliferation so that he...
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September 03, 2004
I think this issue is definitely a winner for Kerry and it's in his best interest to keep hitting it and hitting it hard. It frames both national security and the economy in ways that don't favor the president, and...
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September 01, 2004
First, a site note that is actually about language. Initially, we at Bloodless Coup thought that there would be a fairly equal amount of discussion in all of our issue areas and that our comments on politics would likely stick...
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