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John H. Brown, who resigned in protest from the State Department in March of 2003, on the difference between public diplomacy and propaganda with regard to the Iraq War:

The Pakistani Army, in fierce fighting with tribal forces organized by the Tehrik-i Taliban, claims to have killed some 90 of the enemy in the past week, as the Swat Valley was engulfed in something close to a civil war. Meanwhile, the Tehrik-i Taliban seems to be behind the burning of girls’ schools in Swat. […]

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned with regard to the attempt to implicate Iraq in the anthrax scare in fall of 2001 is the reason Iraq was hard to rule out as a source. It was that it clearly originated in labs in Ames, Iowa. The Reagan administration had permitted the provision to Iraq of […]

MIT has made a breakthrough in energy storage, one of the main obstacles to effective use of solar energy: “Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen […]

Think Progress has an exclusive report on New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh’s discovery that Cheney’s office considered, then rejected, getting up a provocation against Iran as a pretext for going to war. The discussion in Cheney’s office was provoked by the Iranian speedboat incident in January, 2008, in which the Bush administration alleged that five […]

Pakistan appears to be acquiescing in Bush administration demands that it send special ops forces in to fight the dissident tribal forces and the Tehrik-i Taliban, according to LAT. Aljazeera International reports on the impact on civilians of this sort of fighting:

How much of the $10 billion in aid Bush and Cheney gave to Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf after September 11 ended up being used to kill US, NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan? NYT reports that US intelligence intercepted communications between elements of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military intelligence division, indicating that they gave support […]

Bomb blast outside Pakistani consulate at Herat wounds one. Aljazeera International interviews Gen. David McKiernan, who sounds to me just like Barack Obama on Afghanistan– saying that he doesn’t have enough troops in Afghanistan, that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are resurgent, and that the big problem is Taliban sanctuaries in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas […]

My essay why Bush sent a high-level diplomat to meet Iranian negotiators with no preconditions is out in Salon.com. Excerpt: ‘Pundits and diplomats nearly got whiplash from the double take they did when George W. Bush sent the No. 3 man in the State Department to sit at a table on July 19 across from […]