Friday, February 16, 2007

This Week in Babylon

Iran Forum Roundup, a Valentine to Israel, and more on “moral waivers”

During the course of the past few days' online forum on Iran, a number of readers have asked me for my opinion on the prospects of a military confrontation with Tehran. I believe that confrontation is not as inevitable as one might conclude from recent stories in Vanity Fair and the Guardian (the latter of which I cited on day one of the forum). Both those stories, especially the Vanity Fair article, used cherry-picked evidence and talking heads to stack the deck towards the scenario of a coming confrontation.

Friday, February 16, 2007

A Cartoon

Click on the cartoon to zoom in and out.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

War with Iran?

Part three of an online forum: the think-tankers

Is war with Iran on the way? On Tuesday we heard from independent analysts; on Wednesday from four former CIA officials. Today, we’ll conclude the forum with three analyses from think-tank scholars.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

War with Iran?

Part two of an online forum: the CIA officials

Is war with Iran on the way? Yesterday we heard from independent analysts, today we'll hear from four former CIA officials, and tomorrow we'll hear from people at major think tanks.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

War with Iran?

Part one of an online forum: the independent analysts

Last Saturday, the Guardian ran a story stating that “U.S. preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington. The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the U.S. to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year.”

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Weekly Review

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In Iraq, armed men believed to be working for the Ministry of Defense kidnapped an Iranian diplomat, a car bomb killed at least 33 policemen, a political officer affiliated with the Mahdi Army was assassinated, and in Sadr City, Baghdad's largest Shiite slum, conditions were much improved following the input of $41 million in reconstruction funds.[NY Times][CNN][NY Times][NY Times] A mistrial was declared in the court-martial of Lieutenant Ehren K. Watada, the first American military officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq,[NY Times and Vivelacanada] and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates dismissed Vladimir Putin's criticisms of U.S. foreign policy as the “blunt speaking” habits of “old spies.”[MSNBC] Indonesia, the worldwide leader in avian flu, reportedly entered negotiations to sell the deadly virus to an American vaccine company.[NY Times] French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy publicly advocated “an excess of caricatures” depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. [Reuters] Zimbabwe outlawed inflation,[NY Times] and Nigerian rebel leader Major General Tamuno announced that an upcoming offensive dubbed “Operation Black Locust” would “take lives,” “destroy lives,” and “crumble the economy.”[CNN] Pro-Taliban militants in northern Pakistan killed two suspected U.S. collaborators,[BBC News] and in Israel, the streets of Old Jerusalem “ran slick with pulped oranges and tomatoes” as Palestinian protesters and Israeli police officers battled one another.[The Australian] Al Gore accused the Bush Administration of paying bribes to scientists willing to dispute global warming,[CNN] a spokesperson for the Chinese government said the West bore an “unshirkable responsibility” for climate change,[Financial Times] and just 13 percent of Republican congressmen believed humans caused global warming.[National Journal via Drudge Report] Unusually cold weather in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, forced some local residents to wear socks.[Christian Science Monitor]

Monday, February 12, 2007

Six Questions on Donald Rumsfeld for Andrew Cockburn

If you miss having Donald Rumsfeld to kick around, you'll definitely want to check out Andrew Cockburn's soon-to-be released Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. Cockburn, who for the past three decades has written on national security issues for such publications as Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, shreds the former secretary of defense, following Rumsfeld's career from his early days in the Nixon Administration (Nixon once called him a “ruthless little bastard”) through his departure last fall. Cockburn's previous books include The Threat, Inside the Soviet Military Machine, and Out of the Ashes, the Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, which he co-authored with his brother, Patrick.

Friday, February 9, 2007

This Week in Babylon

Baghdad chief out; Curt Weldon's new job; World Bank scandal update.

Friday, February 9, 2007

A Cartoon

Click on the cartoon to zoom in and out.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Kerry Was Right: bad students are getting stuck in Iraq

When Senator John Kerry said last fall that students who didn't do well in school were more likely to “get stuck in Iraq,” he was immediately attacked for insulting the intelligence of U.S. troops. Kerry later insisted that he was actually trying to make a joke not about the troops, but about President Bush. Looking back, however, he had no reason to hedge. His comment as it was first reported was entirely accurate—not because American soldiers in Iraq are dumb, but because the Pentagon, in seeking to overcome serious recruiting shortfalls, has enlisted growing numbers of high school dropouts.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Republic or Empire

A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States

Originally from January 2007.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

“French” put-on sends Justin Case's circus act into high art

Originally from The Providence Journal, Tuesday, January 16, 2007.

I know I was supposed to love it, but when I was a kid I was scared of the circus.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Weekly Review

The U.S. director of national intelligence released a declassified version of a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq; the report found that “the term 'civil war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict” and that “widespread fighting could produce de facto partition.”[Office of the Director of National Intelligence] Iraqi refugees were flooding Syria and Jordan, where they now account for 5 and 12 percent of those countries' total populations,[AP via Yahoo!NEWS] and a massive bombing in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad killed 130 people, making the attack the second deadliest in the country since the March 2003 invasion. [The News (Pakistan)] In Hillah, where a further 45 people were killed, a police officer attempted to smother the blast from a suicide bomber. “He hugged him” said a witness, “and the explosives tore apart both bodies.”[Los Angeles Times] The U.S. military announced that insurgents had shot down four helicopters in the past two weeks in Iraq,[Al Jazeera] former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that the White House was looking for an excuse to attack Iran,[World Socialist Web Site] and President George W. Bush asked for an additional $100 billion to fund the United States's wars through the end of the current fiscal year.[Reuters via Boston Globe] Detainees at Guantánamo Bay complained of “infinite tedium and loneliness,”[AP via Yahoo!NEWS] and a German court issued an arrest warrant for 13 CIA operatives involved in the abduction and torture of a German citizen.[New York Times] Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. “Al Gore,” said a Norwegian lawmaker, “has made a difference.”[AP via BREITBART.COM] President Bush staged an impromptu visit to the Sterling Family Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois, but few of the diners wanted to talk to him. “Sorry to interrupt you,” said Bush. “How's the service?”[Newsweek via MSNBC]

Sunday, February 4, 2007

GoodWorks: not the road to salvation

Last week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story about the tenth-anniversary party thrown by GoodWorks International LLC, a “global advisory firm” founded by Andrew Young, a former civil rights leader and ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter Administration, and Carlton Masters, whose background is in international banking. The party at the Georgia Aquarium had the theme “Do Well By Doing Good,” and Masters, wrote the Journal-Constitution, “said the company promotes transparency, governance, ethics and values in all the countries where it does business.”

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