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The USG Open Source Center surveys the Middle Eastern press reaction to the US raid on Abu al-Kamal in Syria, finding it mostly negative and based on Syrian reports. Lesson: If the US had just gotten word out about its side of the story more quickly and effectively, it might have blunted the generally negative […]

Ooops, typo in title. Go here for “The Hypocrisy of the ‘One Party Rule’ Gambit”

In Baghlan in northern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber killed two US troops while meeting at a local police station. Baghlan, a center of sugar beet production, is largely Tajik (Sunni Persian-speakers) but has a Pushtun minority, some of whom are anti-American and anti-Karzai government. In November of 2007, Taliban there hit a sugar factory during […]

More on the US raid on a house in Syria: The LAT wonders if the attack will derail US-Syrian steps toward rapprochement. Syrian officials are complaining that the raid, which left 8 Syrians dead, was ‘irrational’ and contravened international law. Other Syrian denunciations are given in Arabic by al-Sharq al-Awsat. Farmhouse raided in Abu Kamal […]

Although both candidates tie the resurgence of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan to US domestic security, I personally have difficulty understanding exactly how that works. The September 11, 2001, attacks on the US were planned by Arab expatriates in Hamburg, Germany, and Pushtun tribespeople had almost nothing to do with them (did the Taliban […]

US troops made a raid inside Syrian territory near Iraq, according to Syrian media, which left 8 persons (the Syrians say civilians) dead. What is odd is that the Bush administration did not behave that way when the infiltration of fundamentalist vigilantes from the Syrian side was a more significant problem. I don’t know if […]

1. McCain and Palin called up fraudster Ashley Todd and ‘wishing her a speedy recovery’ after she lied about being attacked by a tall Black man who carved a ‘B’ into her cheek. 2. They did no fact-checking, and if they can’t do fact-checking before a telephone call like that now, when can we expect […]

Young Turks on Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe, purchased at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue out of campaign contributions by the Republican National Committee. And, “wardrobe-gate” is illegal under the campaign finance law McCain helped write! ‘ SEC. 313. USE OF CONTRIBUTED AMOUNTS FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES.(a) PERMITTED USES- …(b) PROHIBITED USE- (1) IN GENERAL- A […]

The US military accidentally killed 9 Afghan soldiers in an air strike on Wednesday, one in a series of mistaken such aerial attacks in recent months, some of which have left behind substantial civilian casualties. Earlier in the Afghanistan war, US commanders had avoided the tactic of air strikes precisely for fear that they would […]