Search
Recent Comments
- PG on Who Is Tony Karon?
- Rigidonv on The Mayhem of GOP Class Politics in 2016
- groovy clock on Rice-Olmert-Abbas: End of the Affair
- Russia’s fanning of anti-Israeli sentiment takes dark detour into Holocaust denialism on What Is Rootless Cosmopolitan?
- Russia’s fanning of anti-Israeli sentiment takes dark detour into Holocaust denialism - Quick Telecast on What Is Rootless Cosmopolitan?
Category Archives: Situation Report
Jihadists vs. Baathists: The Amman Bombing and the Iraqi Insurgency
Saddam and King Abdallah compete for pride of place in an Amman storefront The alliance between the global jihadists of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the various Baathist and other national Islamist and nationalist forces who make up the vast … Continue reading
Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report
12 Comments
The Clerico-Kremlinology of Iran’s Israel Threat
Working class hero? In the lexicon of Iran’s faith-based institutional-revolutionary establishment, calling for Israel’s elimination is– well, an article of faith. It’s one of those cornerstones of an outlook whose restatement is, for the most part, unecessary. Ahmedinajad was speaking, … Continue reading
Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report
10 Comments
Why Bush Won’t Topple Bashar
Bashar, the authoritarian opthalmologist If the outcome of the Iraq war had been even remotely close to that imagined by its architects, the authoritarian regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria would be ripe for the plucking right now. As … Continue reading
Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report
5 Comments
Lost in Iraq, Without a Map
It’s no longer simply the case that U.S. goals in Iraq cannot be achieved; right now U.S. goals in Iraq cannot even be clearly defined. Strip away President Bush’s bumper-sticker bromides about “staying the course” and fighting “Islamo-fascism,” and what … Continue reading
Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report
10 Comments
Prophylactic Spin on Iraq
Mindful of the American public’s sharply declining enthusiasm for squandering more blood and treasure on his failed Iraq enterprise, President Bush is once again adopting his administration’s preferred prophylactic strategy for spinning the slow moving disaster. Thus, his warning on … Continue reading
Posted in Situation Report
5 Comments
U.S.-Iran: Here We Go Again
Tempting as it is, I shall avoid invoking my all time favorite lede in discussing the U.S. effort to get UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. That — my all time favorite lede — would be the observation … Continue reading
Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report
9 Comments
Musharraf’s Balancing Act
Mary Anne Weaver’s typically excellent (I’ve been a fan since 1999, when I read her book Egypt and militant Islam, which remains the best analysis of al-Qaeda’s history I’ve seen) chronicle of the Tora Bora debacle raises the key question … Continue reading
Posted in 99c Blogging, Featured Analysis, Situation Report
5 Comments
Social Darwinism and New Orleans
I’m probably still way too angry about what we’ve seen in New Orleans over the past two weeks to be writing about it. But a piece by Timothy Garton-Ash in the Guardian, of all places, has finally forced me to … Continue reading
Posted in Situation Report
4 Comments
A Plan B for Iraq?
Rumsfeld and Saddam in happier times: Washington backed the Baathists to stem Iranian influence It must be hard for anyone reading the daily media in the U.S. to comprehend the political catastrophe that has befallen the Bush administration’s Iraq plans. … Continue reading
Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report
4 Comments
Iraq: Be Careful of What You Wish For
Khalilzad gets his marching orders 1. The Bush administration only has itself to blame for any sense of disappointment or setback that may follow the failure of Iraq’s parliament to approve a new constitution by the August 15 deadline. After … Continue reading
Posted in Situation Report
5 Comments