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My analysis of this NYT piece is that Bush and the Republicans are betting that they can portray as irresponsible and unpatriotic the Democrats in Congress who decline to give Bush all the war funding he wants. The Democrats are betting that the public desperately wants them to stop the Iraq War, which is hemorrhaging […]

According to the Washington Post’s Tom Ricks, US officers in Iraq are saying that the failure of the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki to capitalize on the reduction of violence in Baghdad to work for political reconciliation forms a grave danger to the future of Iraq. Al-Maliki, a fundamentalist Shiite, has lost the Sunni Arab […]

The USG Open Source Center surveys electronic media in and about Pakistan, reporting on the situation with regard to closure or blocking of television channels, as well as making remarks toward the end on Pakistani blog sites. In other news, on Sunday Gen Pervez Musharraf rejected US calls for him to end the state of […]

Some Saturday reading: At our Global Affairs group blog, Farideh Farhi takes a closer look at the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran. This issue may be the most important one in world politics today, on which war and peace hang. Farhi shows that the IAEA is saying that Iran has satisfactorily answered questions about […]

The Monreal Mirror carries an interview with me by Samer Elatrash, in honor of the holding of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Conference in Montreal. MESA has over 2700 members among teachers and researchers at colleges and universities, mainly in North America. Elatrash writes: ‘ . . . The biggest problem facing Middle East […]

A new poll shows that 81% of Turks favor invading northern Iraq, up from 46% in July. ‘ The number of people saying Turkey should conduct a cross-border military operation against militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) stood at 81 percent, up sharply from 46 percent in the last poll in July.’ . […]

Everyone reads the NYT and WaPo, so I thought it might be interesting to see how some other newspapers covered the Democratic debate. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci awards the Las Vegas debate to Hillary Clinton. Clinton had to come back from her poor performance in Philadelphia. So in that sense she won if […]

The USG Open Source Center analyzes Russia’s renewed ties of patronage with Syria. The analysts look at arms sales, energy deals and port access for the Russian navy, among other dimensions of the relationship, and also trace the ways in which Russia has attempted to defend Syria in international forums. ‘OSC Analysis 15 Nov: Russia […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview given by the leader of Pakistan’s oldest and largest Muslim fundamentalist party, the Jama’at-i Islami [Islamic Society], Qazi Husain Ahmad. The Jama’at had been willing to be part of the government since 2002, and [the coalition to which it belongs] had held about a fifth of the […]