Juan Cole

About that claim by McCain that he warned about the mortgage crisis: McCain: “But — but let me — let me point out, I also warned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and warned about corporate greed and excess, and CEO pay, and all that. A lot of us saw this train wreck coming.” In […]

Did Henry Kissinger advise direct talks with Iran at the highest levels? Yes. Kissinger gave an interview with Bloomberg Television News Service on March 14, 2008: ‘ “One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran,” Kissinger . . . said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. […]

In the debate, McCain promised ‘victory’ in Iraq and praised the surge. First of all, it isn’t ‘victory’ if Baghdad’s best hospital doesn’t even have working elevators any more. Second of all, the violence fell in Baghdad because the Sunnis were massacred or chased to Syria, leaving few mixed neighborhoods, not because of ‘take, clear, […]

Fact-checking the debate (transcript available here). For Pakistan and the controversy over McCain’s ridiculous assertion that Pakistan was a ‘failed state’ in 1999 when Musharraf made his coup, see my “McCain’s Holiday from History” from last February (the terms of the debate between McCain and Obama on these issues, interestingly hasn’t changed). But one thing […]

McCain said in the debate: ‘ So we have a long way to go in our intelligence services. We have to do a better job in human intelligence. And we’ve got to — to make sure that we have people who are trained interrogators so that we don’t ever torture a prisoner ever again.’ Last […]

Keith Olbermann just read out the results of a snap poll of 500 uncommitted voters commissioned by CBS News just after Friday night’s presidential debate: (The snap poll is here): Obama won: 40% Tie: 38% McCain won: 22% 46% of independent voters said their opinion of Obama had improved 55% said McCain would make the […]

On being a Russia expert by virtue of contiguity: “We have trade missions back and forth,” Palin told Couric. “We, we do, it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where, where do they go? […]

Pakistani troops fired on US military helicopters on Thursday. Pakistani officials insisted that the helicopters, which were not hit, had strayed into Pakistani territory. The Pentagon denied this charge. President Asaf Ali Zardari, meeting with US Secretary of State Condi Rice, attempted to paper over the incident, asseting that the Pakistani troops had only been […]

Mao Zedong announced the adage by which John McCain is clearly living now: “The enemy advances, we retreat. / The enemy camps, we harass. / The enemy tires, we attack.” Mao was describing not a conventional but a guerrilla war, and McCain is now unexpectedly playing the Filipino insurgents of 1899 to Obama’s America. Guerrilla […]