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 […]
International Reaction to the NIE: OSC
The USG Open Source Center surveys Iranian, German, French, and Israeli reactions to the US National Intelligence Estimate that holds that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. One is struck by the Israeli reactions, on both sides of the aisle. Former Labor prime minister Ehud Barak dismissed the report. ‘OSC Report: NIE on […]
Cole in Salon: Why Bush’s Troop Surge Won’t Save Iraq
My Salon column, “Why Bush’s troop surge won’t save Iraq,” is now online. Excerpt: ‘the only truly good news to come from Iraq would be good news regarding the political landscape. And there, Iraq is still beset with problems. In recent days, parts of northern Iraq have been invaded by Turkey, an ally of the […]
Did an Iranian Spy Clear Tehran of Nuclear Ambitions?
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran says that Iran did have a nuclear weapons research program until early 2003, but then dismantled it. See Farideh Farhi’s excellent discussion of this development at our joint Global Affairs weblog. There is now a high level of confidence that Iran is no longer seeking nuclear weapons. This […]
Hadley: Iran has no Nuclear Weapons Program
Here is the transcript of Monday’s news conference: Press Briefing by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley James S. Brady Press Briefing Room 3:35 P.M. EST MR. HADLEY: Good afternoon, I’m Steve Hadley, the President’s National Security Advisor. I want to talk a little bit about the recent National Intelligence Estimate that was released to the […]
Michigan Delegates Excluded From Democratic Convention
A specter haunts the Democratic Party, and it is the exclusion of Michigan and Florida delegates from the Democratic Convention. Both the Republican and the Democratic National Committees have been penalizing states that move their primaries up to January, as Michigan and Florida did. The DNC says it will only recognize the Iowa, New Hampshire, […]
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