Unqualified Offerings

Further quick thoughts on the Krepinevich article reviewed last night.
1. Krepinevich’s end aim is - enduring bases! He slips in a mention that the grand coalition of Iraqis he envisions forging would be glad to keep about “20,000″ US troops around on a permanent basis after the insurgency is throttled to help defend the place […]

So, the first episode of the HBO/BBC Rome. If you suspected, like me, that there’s not a lot new to do with this particular story, I don’t think tonight changed your opinion. That leaves us with the enduring questions - How much frontal? How much kinky sex? What twists on the ‘honorable Centurion’ and scheming […]

Sorry for the dismissive tone in the previous item and others. The problem is that all of the “What Should We Do Now?” proposals that I’ve seen suck. I still favor a timed withdrawal, but I recognize that it sucks too - in the sense that the post-withdrawal situation is bad to dire.

The two articles everyone has to read now are the much-discussed Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. essay from Foreign Affairs, “How to Win in Iraq,” and Jason Vest’s new article, “Willful Ignorance: How the Pentagon sent the army to Iraq without a counterinsurgency doctrine,” from the most recent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Right quick, I […]

Adding my voice to the chorus, best wishes and brightest hopes for New Orleans. To any UO readers in the city, may I especially say . . .
GET OUT! GET OUT NOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!
Yglesias explains just what could be in store.

1. Sean T. Collins has a music meme I thought I might do, but it turns out that the Top 100 for 1978 was, as I recalled, a vast fucking wasteland. To think both This Year’s Model and Peter Gabriel’s second album came out the same year.
2. Anton Sherwood is getting spam that can only […]

Mrs. Offering and I just watched Once Upon a Time in Mexico on On Demand. I now understand where the Sin City movie came from - Rodriguez just loves stylization.
But what really struck me is that Antonio Banderas would make the perfect Conan. I mean should Hollywood decide to do authentic Conan. Howard Conan. Yes, […]

That would be the Iraqi people, maybe:
“There is no D-Day,” said Ali Dabagh of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition that dominates the assembly and the Iraqi government. “Negotiations can continue until Oct. 15.”
From the LA Times. October 15 is when the national referendum on the draft constitution is due to take place. Ali […]

Now that’s more like it. Tricia Helfer really kicked ass tonight. She nailed the “sweatsuit scenes” and they were a perfect twist on her prior appearances. The actors were at their best, and the writing was back on track. (Yes, I did see Sharon’s maneuver coming. Yes, I think you could make the usual criticisms […]

Sic Semper Tyrannus 2005, blog of Pat Lang, Former Chief of ME Intelligence, DIA. Very interesting stuff. Via David Corn.

Some days Fafblog is merely brilliant. Other days it’s a work of absolute genius. Excerpt:
FB: So we can actually win the war! That’s great news!
LIEBERMAN: Yes!
REID: Sort of!
BIDEN: Maybe!
CLINTON: I can wrestle a buffalo!
Plenty more where that came from.

Blogads wants a logo that doesn’t suck. I like Blogads. They’ve made me a little money, and the program makes it easy to administer. Plus, the winning designer (who knows who that might be?) earns $1000, and the - ahem - referring blogger pulls in $300 too. So if you read this site, have graphic […]

It occurred to me the other day that if anyone has any doubt whatsoever that the plan is still to establish permanent (”enduring” or whatever) American military bases in Iraq, the President’s actual words should remove any doubt:
Bush took a similar line in January in an interview with Arabic television. “That’s going to be up […]

I’m back if still officially on vacation - about which more anon. Lots of fun, though there’s a flaw in the idea of Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands as vacation paradise if not a fatal one: there’s a reason the phrase “Western Pennsylvania hospitality” is not commonly heard. Take Roy Blount Jr’s description of the Pittsburgh character […]