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The irony of the week is that Oprah Winfrey has come out strongly for Barack Obama as president. Why is that ironic? Because the subtext of Oprah’s television show is that men are unreliable and women have to stick together. So she supports a man for president in preference to another woman. I like Obama […]

At the NYT, Katherine Bouton reviews Nina Burleigh’s new book, “Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt,” which I’m eager to see. In the course of the review, she writes of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798: ‘ Some historians see this venture as an exploratory expedition gone wrong. Others, including the historian […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an article from an opposition Afghanistan newspaper alleging that Washington it deploying Pakistani tribal levies against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. ‘USA trying to use Pakistani insurgents against Al-Qa’idah – Afghan paperCheragh (Light)Saturday, December 8, 2007Document Type: OSC Translated Excerpt USA trying to use Pakistani insurgents against Al-Qa’idah – Afghan […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]