Terrorists, Iraq, and the U.S. Military

Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) were on Meet the Press Sunday morning to discuss Iraq. Since it is impossible for a Republican to say the word “Iraq” without “al-Qaeda” in the same sentence, I was treated to another round of “why it is important to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq.” My head starts [...]

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Saying the obvious

I’ve been trying to post this entry for most of this week. Between the news, blogs, and private discussions I’ve been trying to put my finger on how I feel about the POTUS.
By the way… I like saying POTUS, particularly when it comes to this president. When you stress the first syllable, with a slightly [...]

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Governance

I was having a light conversation with a coworker this afternoon about the ideal form of government for emergent democracies. I’ll bet you have this kind of discussion about as often as I do… not very.
So imagine my surprise when I opened up The New Republic this evening and saw an article about George Tenet. [...]

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I got your counterinsurgency manual right here

The Pentagon survey found that less than half the troops in Iraq thought Iraqi civilians should be treated with dignity and respect. More than a third believed that torture was acceptable if it helped save the life of a fellow soldier or if it helped get information about the insurgents. About 10% of those surveyed [...]

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Pot, meet kettle

In only the second veto of his presidency, Bush rejected legislation pushed by Democratic leaders that would require the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later. “This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our [...]

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Broder: the supreme arbiter of Washington Politics

This week my stroll through the conservative blogosphere has brought me to several criticisms of Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader (and a Democrat from Nevada). If you’ve been paying attention, the big hub-bub this week has been Reid’s statement that the war in Iraq “is lost.”
David Broder has been held up as an [...]

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Finally

I may not ultimately like the results, but I’m glad they’re finally talking to each other – in person, rather than by sound byte.
Dems in talks with GOP on new Iraq bill – Yahoo! News

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White: the new black

Don’t judge me by my results, judge me by my rhetoric…
In an interview last night on PBS, President Bush complained that people who measure progress in Iraq by how many car bombs and suicide attacks occur are giving a “huge victory” to the enemy by making it more difficult for him to promote the war [...]

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The fruit of this evening’s surfing

Here’s a fascinating collection of photos taken in Iraq:
Unembedded

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What does a wall mean to you?

There’s a bit of a controversy going on in Baghdad concerning the building of a wall. The walls are going up between the Iraqi capital’s neighborhoods – what some journalists have apparently come to call “blast walls.”
Answering criticism that the wall is a “sectarian or racist wall,” the Iraqi prime minister was apparently quoted as [...]

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