The irony of the week is that Oprah Winfrey has come out strongly for Barack Obama as president. Why is that ironic? Because the subtext of Oprah’s television show is that men are unreliable and women have to stick together. So she supports a man for president in preference to another woman. I like Obama […]
Napoleon’s Scientists and the Pyramids
At the NYT, Katherine Bouton reviews Nina Burleigh’s new book, “Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt,” which I’m eager to see. In the course of the review, she writes of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798: ‘ Some historians see this venture as an exploratory expedition gone wrong. Others, including the historian […]
Guerrilla War 3.0 in Iraq; Attacks in Bayji, Yusufiya, Elsewhere, Kill 32, Wound Dozens; Dulaimi’s Sunnis Unlikely to Rejoin Government
Guerrillas differ from conventional armies in that they typically avoid direct, conventional engagements on the battlefield. They melt away before a conventional army’s advance, and then reemerge to engage in sniping, sneak attacks, and bombings from an unexpected quarter. The advantage of Fred Kagan’s troop escalation or “surge” is that it allowed a tamping down […]
US Deploys Pakistani Insurgents against Al-Qaeda
The USG Open Source Center translates an article from an opposition Afghanistan newspaper alleging that Washington it deploying Pakistani tribal levies against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. ‘USA trying to use Pakistani insurgents against Al-Qa’idah – Afghan paperCheragh (Light)Saturday, December 8, 2007Document Type: OSC Translated Excerpt USA trying to use Pakistani insurgents against Al-Qa’idah – Afghan […]
Bombings in Diyala Kill over Two Dozen
Bombings were back on the front page in Iraq on Saturday, with significant attacks carried out on Thursday evening and Friday. At Muqdadiya in Diyala province, a female suicide bomber blew up a meeting of the local ‘Awakening Council’ or tribal levies willing to ally with the Americans against the radical Islamic State of Iraq. […]
Romney: Some Beliefs are More Equal than Others
Mitt Romney’s speech in Texas on Thursday was supposed to be an attempt to fend off religious bigotry. Instead, it betrays some prejudices of its own (against secular people), and seems to provoke others to bigotted statements. It has been likened to the speech of John F. Kennedy on his Catholicism. But we knew John […]
Huckabee as Deer in the Headlights Trusts hearsay over NIE
Gov. Mike Huckabee did not know about the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran when asked about it on Wednesday. It had caused a furor in Washington because it concluded that Iran had halted any weapons-related experiments in 2003. It is not such a big scandal that Huckabee hadn’t heard the news. When you are […]
3 US Troops Killed; 25 Slaughtered in Car Bomb Spree Iraq Refugees in Syria Face Hunger, Cold
Four major bombings around Iraq left at least 25 dead and dozens more wounded on Wednesday. Al-Hayat says that a car bomber detonated his payload near the Abd al-Rasul Shiite religious center (Husayniya) in Karrada. It is expected that the count of 15 killed will rise, given the size of the explosion and how crowded […]
Bush Grasp of Reality Tenuous
Farideh Farhi, at our group blog, Global Affairs, says she listened to Bush’s press conference on Tuesday — which was full of implausible statements — and now wants to know what George W. Bush has been smoking. Uh, I don’t think that substance is typically smoked so much as snorted. Or maybe his current favorite […]
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