191 articles
Much of the talk since the Palestinian people decided that Hamas best reflects their views has centered on the question of whether the US and the EU should continue to send aid to an organization pledged to destroy Israel, and on the humanitarian consequences of discontinuing that aid. Interesting…
From the Associated Press: Chertoff: U.S. would have been safer with Dubai company at ports NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. missed an opportunity to make its shores safer when it drove away a Dubai-based company poised to operate cargo terminals at several American seaports, Department of Homeland…
Jerry Kilgore lost his bid to succeed the prospective 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner. Though as Election Day drew near, the Kilgore camp believed they had an issue that would put them over the top -- illegal immigration. It didn't work and may be a harbinger of things to come…
AS GOES BIGGIE, so goes the state of intellectual property.
From AFP: US to test 700-tonne explosive The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said. "I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll…
Go ahead and make the house-passed immigration bill law, writes George Will in today's Washington Post: And conservatives should favor reducing illegality by putting illegal immigrants on a path out of society's crevices and into citizenship by paying fines and back taxes and learning English. Faux…
Social conservatives couldn't have a better friend on Capitol Hill than the Senator from Kansas. On the cultural divide, he stands as far away from Sen. Kennedy as Pluto is from Mars. Yet, Brownback was instrumental in getting the immigration bill out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Upon…
Here are two pieces worth reading on the Mearsheimer-Walt paper on the "Israel Lobby" in the U.S. From Max Boot in the LA Times (reg. req'd): IN HIS CLASSIC 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," the late Richard Hofstadter noted: "One of the impressive things about paranoid…
THOUSANDS OF TROOPS have died fighting a war he chose to fight--a war that increasingly appears to be a microcosm of something much larger than what the American people had bargained for. He seems to be stretching presidential power beyond what his predecessors ever imagined. His approval ratings…
MICHIGAN EDUCATION OFFICIALS are championing a new regulation that would require every high school student's education to include a substantial "online experience" of some kind, with the assumption being that most would complete an online class. To fulfill this vague new mandate, district…
The following is President Reagan's letter accepting the resignation of Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defense and thanking him for his great service to our nation: THE WHITE HOUSE November 5, 1987 Dear Cap: It is with the deepest regret that I accept your resignation as Secretary of Defense,…
From Wired.com: Dozens of Iranian bloggers have faced harassment by the government, been arrested for voicing opposing views, and fled the country in fear of prosecution over the past two years. In the conservative Islamic Republic, where the government has vast control over newspapers and the…
(See here and here.) Posted on March 21, 2006: It would be interesting to know whether the NSA program helped snag Babar and his buddies across the Atlantic. From the BBC: Seven British citizens had acquired "most of the necessary components" to launch a bombing campaign in the UK, the Old Bailey…
From Asharq Al-Awsat: Beirut- Informed sources have revealed told Asharq al-Awsat that the international commission investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri received the transcript of a phone call conversation between a Lebanese official and his Syrian…
AH, SPRING. Snow melts, flowers bloom, and a Democrat's fancy turns to thoughts of impeachment.
IN NOVEMBER OF 1999, when he was first running for the White House, then-Texas governor George W. Bush famously flubbed a Boston TV reporter's challenge to name Pakistan's military chief, who had seized power in a bloodless coup just weeks earlier. "The new Pakistani general," Bush stammered. "I…
THE FIRST GENERATION OF CHRISTIANS faced severe persecution under the Roman Empire because of their refusal to bow down to the goddess Rome and the emperor. For Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old Afghani man who was charged with a capital offense last week for converting from Islam to Christianity,…
I usually agree with the editors of the New York Post, but not this paragraph from today's editorial Forced repatriation, also under consideration, is a drastic - and politically explosive - option. But it needs to be part of the debate, if only to underscore the gravity of the current debate. Do…
THE NEW YORK TIMES today joined the debate about Iraqi documents with a front-page news article and an op-ed by Peter Bergen. It's been nearly two weeks since the first documents were released, but a belated acknowledgement of the news is better than nothing. One might have expected such a longtime…
There is an effort afoot to discredit any material that may undermine the narrative that "Bush lied us into war" and that Saddam's connection to al Qaeda was tenuous at best. Consider this quote from an AP wire story today: [John] Prados, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a…
WILL HE OR WON'T HE? The guessing about whether the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy committee will continue to ratchet interest rates upward has not stopped with the retirement of the enigmatic Alan Greenspan. The clues provided by the financial markets, says Federal Reserve Board chairman…
This issue is not a subject of debate on Capitol Hill by either side in the immigration divide, but it should be. Nearly three years ago, John Fonte, the director of the Hudson Institute's Center for American Common Culture, wrote an interesting article on the "need for a patriotic assimilation…
A HANDFUL OF PROTESTORS gathered outside the White House over the weekend to advocate for the release of jailed Egyptian politician Ayman Nour. The small group of protestors hold signs and chanted, "Stop supporting Mubarak! Stop funding dictators! Free Ayman Nour!"
Blair, in a speech to the Australian parliament: "But the strain of frankly anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in," he said.... "The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved. The…
WHEN IT HEARS ARGUMENTS IN Hamdan v. Rumsfeld this Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Bush administration can try Guantanamo detainees in special military tribunals, or whether the detainees' cases have to be heard in federal court. In the run-up to the hearing, liberal proponents…
These two editorials are worth a read. The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon, a centrist Democrat, argues in today's Washington Post that the best way to prevent a large-scale civil war is to not repeat what happened in Baghdad in April 2003. Back then, unchecked small-scale looting…
POLITICS IS PRETTY SIMPLE. If the debate in an upcoming election puts your party at a disadvantage, it makes sense to try to change the debate. At the moment, the 2006 midterm election is framed as a referendum on the Bush administration and congressional Republicans, putting Republican candidates…
ALBERT WOHLSTETTER, better than almost any other American strategic thinker, understood Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian dictator who died at The Hague where he was on trial for genocide. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 1995, Wohlstetter drew a direct line between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein…
PRESIDENT BUSH RECENTLY NOMINATED MILAN D. Smith Jr. to fill a longstanding vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit, which covers nine western states, is a notorious bastion of liberal judicial lawlessness. So the White House should be looking to fill the…
IN THE INTERNAL POLITICS OF the Republican coalition, some members are consistently more equal than others. In particular, where the interests of the proverbial "Sam's Club Republicans" collide with the interests of the great banks, the Sam's Club set might as well pile into the family car and go…
FOR MORE THAN FOUR YEARS NOW, critics of the Bush administration have warned that the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is fueling the Muslim street's hatred of America. The purportedly unwarranted detention of hundreds of Muslims, coupled with the allegedly unjustified invasion of…
Oprah Heart Harvey
"I HAD THE GREATEST childhood I could ever want," the actor Andy Garcia said in 1999. "The only one I would change it for was to have grown up in Cuba. That would have been heaven on earth. But not Castro's Cuba. And hopefully it wouldn't have been Batista's Cuba, but a democratic Cuba. That would…
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi…
SOUL MUSIC, thank the Lord, is back. Well, sort of. A few rising stars, Joss Stone especially, have been wearing their soul on their sleeves, but even more interesting, several classic soul artists have recorded superb new albums. Solomon Burke and Al Green would be the headliners in this…
Lapham Rising
American Gun Fight
The People's Tycoon
I SEEM TO HAVE WRITTEN another book, my eighteenth. I'm gratified that the ecologists haven't thus far come after me for destroying so many trees. The most ambiguous compliment a writer can receive is to be told that he or she is prolific. I fear that I may be getting prolific, if I'm not already…
FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, the Department of Labor is seriously enforcing its financial reporting requirements of unions and disclosing the results online. As a result, union members--and the public at large--now have the means to examine union finances in extraordinary detail and to learn about the…
SUSAN WAGLE IS A BUSY Republican state senator from Sedgwick County, Kansas. In general, she is busy running for lieutenant governor, but more recently she has been busy preventing Kansas from becoming the first state in the country to own and operate casinos. Last week, thanks in part to Wagle's…
AT LAST A HIGH GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL in Europe got up the nerve to chastise the Dutch government for preparing to legalize infant euthanasia. Italy's Parliamentary Affairs minister, Carlo Giovanardi, said during a radio debate: "Nazi legislation and Hitler's ideas are reemerging in Europe via Dutch…
SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE on Sunday contradicted claims from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that documents captured in postwar Iraq and now being posted on the Internet will not contain anything new or significant.
Ignore this advice, "When we conduct this debate it must be done in a civil way," Mr. Bush said after meeting with groups that support legalizing illegal aliens. "It must be done in a way that doesn't pit one group of people against another." and adopt rhetoric like this, Illegal immigrants are "a…
From today's Los Angeles Times: Iran's Nuclear Steps Quicken, Diplomats Say VIENNA - With efforts to halt its nuclear program at an impasse, Iran is moving faster than expected and is just days from making the first steps toward enriching uranium, said diplomats who have been briefed on the…
(Though Somalia gets little media attention these days, it remains a battleground for radical Islamists. From Reuters: MOGADISHU - Heavy fighting between rival Somali militia linked to Islamic courts and a new "anti-terror" alliance has killed about 90 people in the last three days in the capital,…
(From AP: "Russia had a military intelligence unit operating in Iraq up through the 2003 U.S. invasion and fall of Baghdad, a Russian analyst said Friday. A Pentagon report said Russia provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence on U.S. military movements and plans. The unclassified report does not…
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offers some foreign policy advice, "Good versus evil isn't a strategy," for the White House in today's Los Angeles Times. It's very nice of her. The sophisticated Clintonites weaved a world of stability and hope. They were problem solvers, not ideologues, you…
ACCORDING TO A NEWLY-RELEASED DOCUMENT from the former Iraqi regime, during a February 1995 meeting with members of Iraqi intelligence in Sudan, one of bin Laden's first requests was for "the broadcasting of Sheikh Salman al-Ouda [who has influence both in Saudi Arabia and outside as a religious…
SADDAM'S ULTRA-LOYAL Fedayeen martyrs were ordered to carry out bombings and assassinations in London, Iran, and "self ruled areas" of Iraq in May 1999, according to a newly released Iraqi intelligence document. One such operation, codenamed "Tamooz Mubarak" or "Blessed July," was apparently…
From today's New York Sun: CAIRO, Egypt - A former Democratic senator and 9/11 commissioner says a recently declassified Iraqi account of a 1995 meeting between Osama bin Laden and a senior Iraqi envoy presents a "significant set of facts," and shows a more detailed collaboration between Iraq and…
IF NOTHING ELSE, South Dakota's new antiabortion law created a rough national consensus on a difficult issue: Abortion-rights groups see the law as the fourth sign of the apocalypse; opponents of abortion see it as a tactical blunder. Few people on either side of the abortion divide would be…
IF I WERE TO MENTION the new movie, Inside Man, what would you think of first? Its impressive list of stars, which includes Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, and Clive Owen? Its powerhouse producer, Brian Grazer? Some vague notion that it's yet another slick heist movie being foisted upon the public?
WHEN WE LAST LOOKED at the Islamic Society of Boston's (ISB) efforts to build a mega-mosque in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, the project was beleaguered. Insufficiently funded and riddled with negative media coverage, the ISB lashed out by filing suit against more than a dozen Boston area…
The other day the Powerline guys noted that NBC News managed to bury a legitimate scoop "beneath a grotesquely misleading headline." They wrote: March 22, 2006 It Helps to Read Past the Headline... ...of this report by NBC on the CIA's secret source within Saddam's inner circle: Foreign Minister…
A former ABC news employee I've known for many years, who worked in the same New York City headquarters as John Green, called to tell me that he's not surprised by Green's September 30, 2004 email. Bush had used the "mixed messages" line several times in attacking the Kerry's position on Iraq…
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes today on a "study by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, and a colleague, Linda Bilmes ... at Harvard, that estimates the 'true costs' of the war at more than $1 trillion, and possibly even $2 trillion." Just so you…
Kosovar Albanians don't think much of the UN but they sure like the U.S. and NATO. This was abundantly clear when I was over there last August. They resented the fact that the UN Security Council sat on its hands while Milosevic's forces rampaged throughout the province. They were also well aware…
AMERICA HAS AN IMMIGRATION PROBLEM. We're not sure precisely what it is, or how to fix it, or if the cure would be worse than the disease. And even if we knew those answers, we're far from reaching a consensus that might, someday, when the political climate is just right, move us toward taking…
IT IS BY NOW a commonplace that the state of Europe hovers between dire and grave. Sclerotic economies, plummeting birthrates, and moribund militaries all appear symptomatic of imminent collapse. Exacerbating its condition is the widespread decline of the continent's ancestral faith. Europe, it…
Additional material (text, audio and video) has just been released by the US Army Foreign Military Studies Office. If you can translate any of it, please send it along. Here's a sample of the material with its accompanying synopsis: IISP-2003-00038100 Synopsis: Intelligence coded memo by two IIS…
(Editor & Publisher has more on the Loven controversy here.) Posted on March 18, 2006 06:13 PM: The Associated Press or a DNC Press Release? This piece by Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press is a classic. The DNC couldn't have done a better job. Of course, Loven may want to do her own fact…
What America looks like in the eyes of a frequent Daily Kos blogger. Wonder if Senator Harry Reid, who will be attending the YearlyKos convention, and Sen. Kerry, an occasional Kos blogger, agree?
IT'S THE UGLIEST THING north of Los Angeles and south of Juneau. Dirty, noisy, homely from every angle, and so massive it is visible from space. For 50 years it has ruined the downtown waterfront. Seattleites now have an excuse to be rid of the cursed thing, and many are desperate to do so.
Therefore we say that to force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq the resistance has to measured by painful strikes against their forces and accompanying this a informative campaign clarifying the truth of the situation inside Iraq, and we must absolutely gain from the approaching date of…
It would be interesting to know whether the NSA program helped snag Babar and his buddies across the Atlantic. From the BBC: Seven British citizens had acquired "most of the necessary components" to launch a bombing campaign in the UK, the Old Bailey has heard. Prosecutor David Waters QC said…
Lee Smith's hilarious and devastating response to Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's "The Israel Lobby" is a must read.
Yesterday, the president rightly praised the work of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar. Commanded by Col. H.R. McMaster, the 3rd Cav regained control of a city that had been taken over again by al Qaeda. The president stated: [B]y September 2004, the terrorists and insurgents had…
IT'S TIME FOR PRESIDENT BUSH to think about a third term. No, he doesn't need to overturn the Constitution. He can start the equivalent of his third term now, by filling his presidential staff and cabinet with new faces--or old faces in new positions--and by concentrating on new or forgotten…
From today's Los Angeles Times: Some U.S. Officials Fear Iran Is Helping Al Qaeda WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence officials, already focused on Iran's potential for building nuclear weapons, are struggling to solve a more immediate mystery: the murky relationship between the new Tehran leadership…
WHEN THE IRAQI REGIME collapsed in April 2003, few observers saw reason to mourn the loss of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. While a great deal of information about the former Iraqi regime's assorted atrocities has been uncovered since the invasion, newly-released documents go even further in…
The History Channel notes that today is the anniversary of the March 20, 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo -- an attack that might have killed tens of thousands if the gas had been more effectively disbursed. At the height of the morning rush hour in Tokyo, Japan, five two-man terrorist teams…
The Beltway Blitz explains it all here.
I wonder what his position is on the cartoons. From the Associated Press: COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- A radical Islamic group spokesman has been charged with threatening the government for distributing a leaflet urging Muslims to ''eliminate'' rulers that prevent them from joining the Iraq insurgency, a…
James T. Quinlivan, a military analyst at RAND, evaluated the effectiveness of recent stability deployments where the "objective is not to destroy an enemy but to provide security for residents so that they have enough confidence to manage their daily affairs and to support a government authority…
THINK OF V for Vendetta, the new movie written and produced by the brothers who made the Matrix pictures, as an Atlas Shrugged for leftist lunatics.
PATRICK BUCHANAN, COMMENTATOR AND former presidential candidate, looked over the issues on the political agenda in 2006 and liked what he saw. It was a paleoconservative's delight. There was the Dubai ports deal, rejected by a congressional uprising part nationalistic, part isolationist. There's…
Taboo Term
JOHN ADAMS HAS MADE A career of creating art from recent events. One of the country's most important composers, he specializes in turning the messiness of American politics into grand myth.
The March
Camp Victory, Iraq
IT IS GRATIFYING TO SEE in the obituaries and tributes published since the recent death of Mike Joyce that his contribution to conservative philanthropy and conservative thought is widely recognized. He was director of the John M. Olin Foundation and president of the Bradley Foundation during the…
Profumo After the Affair
SOMETIMES WORDS TELL THE TRUTH on purpose; sometimes they give it away by accident. Both things happened last week in mid-Palo Alto, down the road from Stanford University, ground zero of Silicon Valley--where pale pink plum-blossoms bloom in February and Ferraris are as common as Pontiacs in…
Our Endangered Values
JOHN ROBERTS HAS SAT IN the center seat of the Supreme Court a mere five months. Conventional wisdom holds that it takes four or five years for a new justice to hit his stride. Even so, Roberts's work stands out in a Washington whose daily manufacture, it seems, is another fight between an…
BOOKS IN BRIEF
Sprawl
I HAD JUST SETTLED DOWN to go to sleep when two thunderous explosions shattered the desert stillness. The blasts were still echoing when a young soldier at the back of my tent started shouting in pain. While other soldiers began tending their wounded comrade, I made my way outside. SCUD alert…
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS'S UNANIMOUS opinion for the Supreme Court in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Individual Rights, upholding the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment against challenge by a coalition of law schools and law faculties, decisively resolved the essential legal issues…
On February 16, President George W. Bush assembled a small group of congressional Republicans for a briefing on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley were there, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad participated via teleconference from Baghdad. As the…
New Orleans
ON FEBRUARY 24, a tectonic shift took place in the shadowy world of special operations. It was an event years in the making, but it probably wouldn't have happened at all if not for the al Qaeda attacks on September 11.
IT IS AXIOMATIC that political families end up in time turning into their opposites, and quite often both eerie and sad. The Adamses began with John, blunt, out-spoken, middle-class, bursting with energy and fiercely ambitious, and ended, three generations and many drunks later, with Brooks and…
Vice President Cheney pulled no punches today on Face the Nation: Q Let me read to you what Senator Kennedy, liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, and a long-time opponent of the war said on the third anniversary. Here's part of his statement. He said: "It is clearer than ever that Iraq was a war we…
This piece by Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press is a classic. The DNC couldn't have done a better job. Of course, Loven may want to do her own fact checking before trying to zing the president. For example, she writes: Last fall, the rhetorical tool became popular with Bush when the debate…
This piece by John Lloyd in the New Statesman is worth a read. The repeated invasions of contiguous states; the massacres of Kurds and southern Shia; the license given to torturers, rapists and murderers wearing the uniforms of secret police; the complete arbitrariness of Saddam's kleptocratic…
Leadership matters. Tuesday's Globe and Mail has some interesting poll results on the Canadian troop deployment to Afghanistan. Canadians' views have shifted sharply in support of the Afghan military mission even as troop casualties have mounted over the past three weeks, a new poll suggests. A…
If you believe France's current economy is sclerotic, imagine what it will be years from now if millions of French youth possess the same attitude and driving ambition of Maud Pottier. From today's Washington Post: PARIS, March 16 -- An estimated 250,000 students took to the streets of Paris and…
IN HIS CLASSIC The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave Le Bon wrote:
Dear George Clooney,
TOWARD THE END of St. Patrick's Day, I often wonder why Americans, whatever our creed, use this religious holiday as an opportunity to morph into libertines. Sure, we all celebrate the merry holidays, such as Christmas and St. Paddy's, but you don't see nonbelievers fasting on Yom Kippur or Good…
JEROME ARMSTRONG AND MARKOS MOULITSAS are pioneers. Armstrong founded MyDD.com, arguably the first political blog of real prominence. As for Moulitsas, he's the founder and proprietor of Daily Kos, by far the most widely read of all political blogs. Pioneers they may be, but neither Armstrong nor…
(This document would certainly be consistent with the type of operations described below.) From March 14, 2006 post: The latest issue of Foreign Affairs contains excerpts from a recently declassified report, produced by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, on the inner workings of Saddam's regime. This…
(Update II: The ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee applauds Sen. Feingold's censure efforts. Sens. Boxer and Harkin have also jumped on the censure bandwagon. And the good news continues. According to the Hotline, "Senate Republicans will force a floor vote on Sen. Feingold's censure…
The sarin gas attack that killed 12 and injured thousands in a Tokyo subway in 1995 is back in the news. "The Tokyo High Court has upheld the death sentence against Tomomitsu Niimi," reports Singapore's TODAY, "a key member of the Aum doomsday cult who was convicted of attacks including the deadly…
From today's New York Observer: "Let's say skinheads had bought a company to take over our port," [Sen. Chuck Schumer] said. "I think the outcry would have been the same." What exactly is Schumer saying here?
IT WASN'T A CAR BOMB, but the University of North Carolina must now come to terms with its first potential case of vehicular terrorism after an Iranian born, recent UNC graduate confessed to authorities his motive for driving a rented Jeep Grand Cherokee across the UNC campus into nine students was…
WHEN A JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE LAREDO surged onto the campus hub known as the Pit around noon on March 3, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students suddenly had far more to think about than the upcoming basketball game against Duke University. The driver, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, had been…
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has created a website where it will post documents captured in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. The website is hosted by the Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center at Fort Leavenworth and will be updated continuously…
From a Fortune magazine piece on Beijing's activities in Africa: ...African governments view China as a more cooperative partner than the West. China has refused to back regular Western rebukes of African corruption and human-rights abuses and last year used its permanent seat on the UN Security…
Here's a brief translation of this New York Times piece, In Iran, Dissenting Voices Rise on Its Leaders' Nuclear Strategy: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad needs to shut-up so we can move forward on our nuke program without getting overly hassled by the EU, the US and the UN.
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee want more scrutiny of the Bush administration. No surprise here. Sen. Jay Rockefeller is just following the script outlined in a Democratic staffer's 2003 memo on how to use the Intelligence Committee to attack the White House. Perhaps this Democratic…
THE SEASON OF ABORTION LITIGATION is in full bloom. South Dakota's passage of a bill banning all abortions has captured most of the headlines, and Mississippi is considering similar legislation. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has quietly decided two abortion cases this term--the first dealing with…
Milosevic's trial for war crimes committed in the 1990s began in 2002 at The Hague. Yet, Khmer Rouge leaders are still awaiting trial on charges of genocide for the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians from 1975-78 under the regime of Pol Pot. Many Cambodians are worried that these aging leaders…
The latest issue of Foreign Affairs contains excerpts from a recently declassified report, produced by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, on the inner workings of Saddam's regime. This paragraph, in particular, hasn't received much attention in the media: The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the…
It is perhaps coincidental, but certainly apropos, that at the start of "Sunshine Week"--an annual promotion of openness and transparency in government--we receive word from Director of National Intelligence Negroponte that documents captured in Iraq will be released to the public for review and…
THE WASHINGTON POST EXPRESS began its review of CBS's new drama, The Unit, with the following: "Just when you thought that mindless flag-waving, fear-mongering and Arab-stereotyping were starting to fade, here comes 'The Unit' . . . which ignores the realities of the 'war on terror' mire while…
The Bush administration has decided to release most of the documents captured in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq. The details of the document release are still being worked out, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Those details are critical. At issue are things like the…
If you didn't catch it last night, 60 Minutes profiled the operations of the 3rd Armored Cavalry, commanded by Col. H.R. McMaster, in Tal Afar -- a city that had literally been taken over again by al Qaeda before the 3rd moved in. The transcript may be found here. McMaster points out that it's…
(Update II: Uribe supporters won big in yesterday's congressional elections, paving the way for passage of the U.S-Colombia free trade deal. With strong support in Congress and probable reelection in May, Uribe's offensive against the FARC will likely intensify. All of this is pretty remarkable…
(Update: Feingold flops. Apparently, the Democratic leadership would like to gain seats in November. Republicans shouldn't let them off the hook so easily. From the Associated Press: "Democrats distanced themselves Monday from Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold's effort to censure President Bush over…
Politicians like New York Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel have claimed that the military relies disproportionately on the poor to fill its ranks. Since the Iraq invasion, in particular, it has become a standard anti-war talking point. The problem is it isn't true. From today's New York Times:…
On trial at The Hague since 2002 for war crimes, former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was "found dead in his prison cell" Saturday morning. His legacy is one of death, destruction and deep ethnic hatred. Last August, I traveled throughout Kosovo and found a place still very much haunted by the…
Here's an interesting piece from today's New York Times on a Syrian-American doctor's efforts to counter radical Islam: Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam…
From Reuters: An official apology "is absolutely necessary ... because your government has not dealt with them (Muslims) respectfully," Islamic scholar Tareq al-Suweidan told a conference hosted by the [Danish] government in an attempt to ease tension over the drawings. "We want the laws in Denmark…
Some may buy Sen. Hillary Clinton's line that she opposed the deal because it would have endangered "our nation's security." Perhaps a few more may buy into Speaker Hastert's line that his opposition was based on concern for the "safety of our children." Others may believe that it's all about…
Reader Kevin French emails: Dubai Ports World is returning the six US Ports to American control and this heads off a political showdown between the White House and the folks up on Capitol Hill but who will be next? I notice the NYSE company has just been listed on the New York Stock Exchange. I…
THE CURRENT WEEKLY STANDARD sports a nifty parody of Grant Wood's American Gothic. If you want to read a learned, balanced piece about the cultural context and significance of the painting, stop reading this and click here.
London
LEST I RUN AFOUL of the munificent and trusting folks over at HBO, I won't tell you what happens in the first four episodes of The Sopranos, whose sixth (and probably final) season premieres this Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Believe me, I wish I could; but like Tony, I took an oath. So I'll just paint with…
ACCORDING TO yesterday's news, the controversial deal that would have had a United Arab Emirates firm, Dubai Ports World, take over the management of six major U.S. ports is now dead. The Dubai-based firm has decided, in the face of congressional opposition and an almost endless campaign of…
Yesterday, on The Charlie Rose Show, John Kerry's running mate was tough as nails on denying Tehran a nuclear weapon. CHARLIE ROSE: What did you make of what the vice president said, that the United States will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons? CHARLIE ROSE: Do you agree with it? JOHN…
A word of warning from the archipelago: A fierce debate over sweeping anti-pornography and morality laws that are backed by Islamic parties in the parliament have infuriated the vast majority of moderate Indonesian Muslims.... "People are angry, they are up to the neck, but they are afraid of them…
From CNET News: Yahoo and the other top U.S.-based search engines have come under fire for their practice of cooperating with the Chinese government in censoring information online. Yahoo has been accused of providing evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese…
WITH SECTARIAN VIOLENCE flaring up across Iraq, the release late last month of the Pentagon's third, semi-regular report to Congress on the progress of the war could hardly have come at a better time. "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq" is--as its title suggests--an attempt to lay down…
Iran secretly agreed to assist the Taliban in its war against U.S. forces in October 2001, according to the transcript of a high-level Taliban official's tribunal session at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba. The seven-page transcript, as well as thousands of pages of similar documents, was released by the…
This cover piece, Freedom Fighter, in the latest issue of Progress, a journal published by British Labour Party members, is sure to get the attention of the anti-Bush folks on the island. Oliver Kamm, author of Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-wing Case for a Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy, argues…
(From Reuters: But after a government-led media campaign against U.N. intervention, nationalist sentiment in Sudan is running high. The pro-government al-Intibaha newspaper has announced the formation of two new Islamist movements threatening to target foreign interests in Darfur, called the Darfur…
While most Americans haven't been following Democratic primary politics in the 28th congressional district of Texas, the Left has been immersed in it. A freshman conservative Democrat (yes, there are a few of them around), Rep. Henry Cuellar, faced a primary challenge from an anti-war liberal, Ciro…
LAST SUNDAY, while returning home from Pakistan aboard Air Force One, President Bush received a telephone call from his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The two men discussed several issues that threaten to disrupt U.S.-Russian solidarity in the war on terror--foremost, Russia's diplomatic…
The March/April 2006 Columbia Journalism Review has a revealing profile of Walter Pincus, the Washington Post's leading national security correspondent. There's no link to the piece ("The Optimist" by David Glenn), so these excerpts will have to do: On the Role of the News Media Pincus himself…
VP Cheney's remark may be the most categorical yet from a senior Bush administration official on stopping an Iranian nuke. From the AP: March 7, 2006 Cheney Says U.S. Won't Let Iran Get Nukes DATELINE: WASHINGTON BODY: Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that Iran will not be allowed to have a…
Rep. Edward Markey, the Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, isn't happy with the nuclear deal President Bush agreed to with the government of India. The deal "has blown a hole in the nuclear rules that the entire world has been playing by, " said Markey, and "empowers the hawks in every…
When it comes to Iraq's national army, infiltration and loyalty may be a bigger concern than the total number of troops trained and deployed -- which is why this is not particularly good news if accurate.
This might be one of those turning points in economic and political affairs. In economics, we might be seeing the end of the era of free trade. In politics, we might be witnessing the reemergence of nationalism and its close cousin, protectionism. The result will surely be a less efficient use of…
For the better part of the last several years, there has been an ongoing debate over the detainees held by the United States as enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Members of the administration, including Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, have described those being held there as being "the worst of…
(The AP reports that "the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said he was hopeful Monday about reaching an international agreement to defuse concerns about Iran's nuclear activities and make U.N. Security Council action unnecessary.") Iran's talks with Moscow and now Beijing appear to be…
"Ending a decade-long battle in favor of the Defense Department," the New York Times reports, "the court [8 to 0] rejected the argument of law school faculty members that being forced to associate with military recruiters violated their First Amendment rights to free speech and association. At…
According to the Telegraph, Iran's Revolutionary Guards have taken the extraordinary step of cutting down thousands of trees in Teheran to prevent United Nations inspectors from finding traces of enriched uranium from a top-secret nuclear plant.... According to western intelligence sources, more…
"Faced with attacks against their sheikhs and clan members, a number of Sunni tribes from Hawijah -- a rebel bastion in northern Iraq -- have declared war on Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," reports Agence France Presse.
In her opinion sustaining the use of race in admissions in the 2003 University of Michigan Law School case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spoke of the "deference" owed to institutions of higher education as they make "complex educational judgments." In the three years since the former justice wrote…
American Gothic
Copenhagen
In the aftermath of the New York Times's illegal disclosure of surveillance by the National Security Agency, the Senate now debates whether to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the law that formulates a procedure for the president to obtain warrants to wiretap foreign…
Eleven years ago, Page Britain gave birth to a baby girl, assisted by her partner of six years, Sue Ellen Carvin. Nine months before, Carvin had helped artificially inseminate Britain with sperm donated by a friend. Britain and Carvin raised the little girl together until their relationship ended…
The Letters of Lytton Strachey
Winning the Race
When the late Allan Bloom visited the Harvard campus some years ago to deliver a speech on his bestselling book The Closing of the American Mind, he began his remarks with the salutation, "Fellow Elitists," a takeoff on Franklin Roosevelt's address years earlier to the nativist Daughters of the…
More Documents, Please (cont.)
The Poems of Catullus
Like few presidents before him, President Bush was poised for a consequential and potentially quite successful second term. It hasn't worked out that way (so far). Bush made one strategic error in 2005, guessing wrongly that the country was adult and serious enough to reform Social Security. Now he…
Sharia-Free Zone
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what is plagiarism? The least sincere form? A genuine crime? Or merely the work of someone with less-than-complete mastery of quotation marks who is in too great a hurry to come up with words and ideas of his own?
The significance of Lawrence Summers's resignation under fire as president of Harvard University has been widely misunderstood. Oozing sympathy for a beleaguered and aggrieved Harvard faculty, the Boston Globe editorial page argued that because he was "arrogant" and "brusque," in short a "bully,"…
DEMAGOGUES TO THE RIGHT OF THEM, appeasers to the left of them, media in front of them, volleying and thundering. Can the Bush administration continue to charge ahead? Does it have the will--and the competence--to lead the nation for the next three years toward victory in the long war against…
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a government in want of information must be in possession of a warrant. Or, if one prefers to quote the Warren Court, as do critics of NSA surveillance and the Patriot Act: "Searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge…
BOOKS IN BRIEF
Houston
On Wednesday, Saddam Hussein made a dramatic courtroom admission reminiscent of the movie A Few Good Men. In the film, young Navy defense attorney Lt. Daniel Kafee (Tom Cruise) needs to prove that Lt. Colonel Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) ordered Kafee's clients to execute a "Code Red" which…
(The editors of the Washington Post make their Case for Democracy. They write: Yes, we might welcome the benign dictator who would nurture the "rule of law" until his nation was "ready" for democracy -- and then would give way gracefully to his matured people. But for the same reason that we wish…
Today's Washington Post reports on a bipartisan report released by The Council on Foreign Relations on U.S.-Russia relations. The report makes some good points. The Bush administration should stop pretending Russia is a genuine strategic partner and adopt a new policy of "selective cooperation" and…
The tip of the anti-Semetic iceberg? From today's New York Times: Two strips of red-and-white police tape bar the entrance to the low-ceilinged pump room where a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, spent the last weeks of his life, tormented and tortured by his captors and eventually splashed with acid…
(The corrupt strike back. From yesterday's Christian Science Monitor: Masked, armed police Thursday stormed the offices of a leading Kenyan media company in a raid seen as punishment for reports criticizing the government's dismal record on corruption. Dozens of officers carrying AK-47 assault…
Former Deputy Secretary of State Armitage has some tough words for the new boss of Foggy Bottom. Of course, I bet Secretary Rice has racked up more international travel miles than her predecessor at this point in his term. But Armitage does have a point. Australia has been a great ally in Iraq and…
(The latest from Peters.) New York Post columnist Ralph Peters continues his daily observations from Iraq. His columns have been totally at odds with some other stuff I have read -- notably William Buckley's piece. Today, he notes: After the terrorists blew up that shrine in Samarra last week, you…
The atrocities in Darfur continue. But thanks to Moscow and Beijing the government in Khartoum doesn't have to worry about UN-imposed sanctions. From ABC News: The U.N. Security Council remained divided Monday on imposing punitive measures over the conflict in Darfur despite calls for sanctions…
[img caption="Matt Continetti, desert bandito." float="right" width="400" height="300" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]8864[/img] Somewhere in the Pacific
According to top White House strategist Karl Rove, Americans can be divided into two groups--those with a pre-9/11 view of the world and those with a post-9/11 perspective. The same basic distinction also applies in Germany, where the country's highest court last week declared as "unconstitutional"…
From Marshall Wittmann's Bull Moose blog: Some opponents of the war are smugly chortling that "we told you so." Perhaps. But, these opponents do not necessarily occupy the strategic nor moral high ground. Do they really think that any post-9/11 President would allow Saddam to continue to taunt the…
(Update II: Matthew Yglesias has responded to my updated post. I disagree with his assessment for many reasons but nonetheless thought it only fair to post his response here (scroll down to the March 3 posts). Be sure to also read the comments section for some interesting debate.) (Update: Some now…
Members of the "Taiwan Haters Club" must be truly dismayed. When Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian formally announced the scrapping of the National Unification Council (NUC) on Monday, these supreme panda huggers were, with good reason, expecting the Taiwanese "troublemakers" to be lambasted by the…
Puerto Vallarta
Consider... In a letter, dated February 21, to Senator Frist, Sen. Clinton wrote: This sale will create an unacceptable risk to the security of our ports. We therefore request that emergency legislation we are introducing to ban foreign governments from controlling operations at our ports be slated…
Why Not the Best? That was the title of Jimmy Carter's autobiography and the leitmotif of his 1976 presidential campaign, when he exhorted Americans to "lift ourselves above mediocrity and fulfill the ambitions to which America aspires." But mediocrity, not excellence, is the hallmark of the…
The latest issue of Parameters has an interesting piece, The Future of Afghanistan, by Ali A. Jalali, the nation's interior minister from January 2003 to September 2005. He gives a comprehensive review of what's going on the ground and also warns that the progress made in Afghanistan could vanish…
This piece by Daniel Johnson in Commentary magazine ought to drive the British Left crazy. The British are proud of their independence; they follow American fashions, whether from Hollywood or Washington, only if they can make them their own. Fortunately, Tony Blair made foreign-policy…
Frequent Weekly Standard contributor Dan Twining emailed his thoughts on one of the most underreported economic stories out there. While China gets most of the attention on the business pages, India has quietly positioned itself to be a dominant player in the 21st century world economy. In fact,…
AMERICAN CHURCH OFFICIALS pleaded for forgiveness for the sins of the United States last week--from the Iraq War, to Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Accord, to the racism exposed by Hurricane Katrina, to economic exploitation, and for the more general American sin of idolatry.
Mazatlán
Perhaps the students had never heard of the Ofuna crouch. The guards made the prisoner put his hands over his head, bend into a crouch, then stand on the balls of his feet. After five minutes it was excruciating. Sometimes it would last 30 minutes, sometimes several hours. If the prisoner fell…