I used to think it might be a good thing for Obama to continue to make egregious errors. It would allow people to see his feet of clay and to understand the dangers of his naive and uninformed views. But, … Continue reading →
Allison Kaplan Summer translates an Obama interview with the Israeli news source Ynet that is due to appear on Friday. Asked how he would deal with the threat of Iran and whether he would support military action if diplomacy fails, … Continue reading →
It’s no surprise that a professor has written a piece that goes even further than the NIE in its assessment of the nuclear tameness of Iran. Cinnamon Stillwell reports that Dr. William O. Beeman, chair of anthropology at the University … Continue reading →
This Washington Post article gives us a little bit of behind-the-scenes information on the background to the latest NIE report on Iran’s nuclear program. What we find there isn’t especially reassuring. The agencies involved are connecting some mighty distant dots, … Continue reading →
The best analyses of the new NIE report on the Iranian “now we see it, now we don’t” bomb can be found at Richard Fernandez’s Belmont Club. Please take a look at any and/or all of them: this, this, and … Continue reading →
Pakistan faces a crisis. President Musharraf has gone a route that appears to be highly tyrannical—declaring a state of emergency, suspending human rights guarantees, and arresting his enemies (including the head of the Supreme Court). For this, he’s been roundly … Continue reading →
In taking fifteen British sailors prisoner, the Iranian government is merely following its tradition of win-win hostage-taking. When in trouble (and there is some evidence the mullahs are in a certain amount of internal political difficulty in Iran), the best … Continue reading →
I heard the news with surprise on the radio: the Bush administration has announced that the US will participate in talks with Iran and Syria. That seemed awfully odd to me, given the administration’s previous declarations that this will not … Continue reading →
I’ve been noticing lately that two lovely impulses seem to go hand-in-hand–virulent anti-Semitism plus the willingness to use one’s own people as a sacrifice to the larger goal of destroying the Jews. Take a look at this post of Dr. … Continue reading →
At the end of this week’s podcast, the Sanity Squad briefly mentioned the election results in Iran, which were being counted and reported (preliminarily) even as we spoke. First the results showed a repudiation of Ahmadinejad, then new “results” seemed … Continue reading →
On the topic of James Baker and Lee Hamilton’s suggestion that we talk to Iran and Syria about helping us out in Iraq, I’d say a person would have to be either abysmally stupid, mindbogglingly ignorant, or stark raving mad … Continue reading →
It’s not just that I disagree with the “we need to talk with Iran” folks. It’s that they actually seem demented and deluded. Their suggestion makes no sense–or about as much sense as “talk with Hitler” would have made in … Continue reading →