Unqualified Offerings

Leila Fadel with the good news you’re not hearing about from the Iraqi parliament:
The Committee of the annual Muslim pilgrimage, Hajj, offered up two trips to go to Hajj to each parliament member. Yes, I didn’t know about this committee either. Also they are struggling to get the Iraqi soccer team, who won the Asia [...]

A chilling look at an all-too-possible future, if the doubters and defeatists get their way, from Army of Dude:
It has been a week since our triumphant return to the states, to America, the first world. And as it wasn’t quite like I imagined in June, it was every bit as wonderful and surreal as I [...]

Impressive engineering achievements in Humvee design only mask the human truth that our military isn’t wanted in Iraq. Consider the contrapositive: in those pockets of Iraq where the locals currently object less to the US presence, like Ramadi, Americans can actually shed their body armor. In such places, a critical mass of Iraqis doesn’t sustain [...]

New paleocon foreign-policy blog: Exit Strategies, featuring a trio of anti-interventionist conservative writers. We desperately need people like this writing and thinking about foreign and domestic security policy, because neither the Republican Party nor “conservatism” are going away. I sincerely hope both will go into eclipse for awhile, long enough to detox from their hegemony [...]

Ken Silverstein notes that whatever Blackwater is guarding, nobody’s blocking the famous “revolving door.” Would it stun you to learn that Blackwater executives are very well-connected to the Republican Party hierarchy? No?
Meanwhile, Richard Miniter of Pajamas Media simpered yesterday about poor, put-upon Blackwater’s troubles and the difficulties they are causing the Regency in Baghdad. [...]

Thoreau was hard on the Dems today and I usually am too, but today they get a little credit – Senate Dems voted almost unanimously in favor of the Restore Habeas Corpus Act. At the margins there may have been some who voted Aye only because they knew it would fail, but the trend on [...]

By Mona
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If you are as huge a fan of the estimable Dr. Michael Ledeen as I am, you must not miss his exchange of email with Greenwald. Selling arms to a country we are at war with (at war, that is, according to sharp foreign policy “expert” Ledeen) isn’t treason when neocons [...]

By Thoreau
Yesterday, on a tour of Sauron’s optometrist, Bush called for the East Germany Restoration Act to be extended.  He also called for lawsuit protection for companies collaborating in warrantless spying on their fellow citizens, in the event that these activities are found to be illegal.
Like Jim predicted (sorry, can’t find the link right now), [...]