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At the Global Affairs group blog: Farideh Farhi discusses negotiations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency over inspections of the latter’s nuclear programs. She also tells us about the imminent release of Iranian-American intellectual Kian Tajbakhsh, from prison. Barnett Rubin discusses the collapse of the legitimacy of the Pakistani government in the wake […]

Ambassador Gerald B. Helman writes: In current discussions of the situation in Iraq, insufficient attention is being paid to perhaps the most sensitive barometer available, that of refugee flows. To date, of Iraq’s pre-war population of about 30 million, about 13% have either fled their country or are internally displaced–a historically very large proportion of […]

Just promoting a book I just found out about. You all know about my thing for the Founding Generation of Americans.

Barnett Rubin gives us a thoughtful call to arms on how to prevent war with Iran at the Global Affairs blog. After analyzing the way the Bushies would probably go to war if they can, Rubin writes: ‘ The immediate goal for Democratic presidential candidates and the Democrats (and sensible Republicans) in Congress should be […]

Tom Engelhardt’s essay, “The Empire of Stupidity,” discusses Iraq, Vietnam and ‘victory culture.’ Engelhardt is author of the recently reissued The End of Victory Culture“, with a new preface and conclusion. It is in some ways an answer to Frederick Jackson Turner’s conundrum– if the Frontier had been so central to American identity, what would […]

As Barnett Rubin notes at the Global Affairs blog, Haleh Esfandiari has been allowed to leave Iran and has met her husband, Shaul Bakhash, in Vienna. I am so happy that my friend is free, though I regret the continued imprisonment of three other Iranian-American intellectuals (not to mention many, many prisoners of conscience.) And, […]

More from Barnett Rubin on signs of a potential Bush administration attack on Iran at the Global Affairs blog. He quotes Alex Debat from the Times of London: “the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days.”

Here’s some light reading for your Labor Day weekend. Afghanistan is pretty clearly becoming a problem for the US diplomatically and militarily of a major sort that would be front page news if it weren’t for the even more deadly horror show in Iraq. Barnett Rubin weighs in on the release of the Korean hostages […]

A Government Accounting Office report has found that the Iraqi government has not met 13 of 18 benchmarks set by the US Congress. The report was leaked before it could be doctored by the Bush administration, which promptly denounced it and pledged to . . . doctor it. Another thing that could be said is […]