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Are we Already at War? Have US-enabled Kurds killed 200 Iranian Troops? I got the below by anonymous email regarding a German news program last month. Am passing it on not because I buy it or its details but because there is at the least an issue in the Kurdish terrorist groups that are operating […]

Rubin: Will Bin Laden Win? See Barnett Rubin’s essential piece at our group blog, “The Pessoptimist in Istanbul: Will Bin Laden Win?” With amazing concision, he explains everything from why Bin Laden was angry about the abolition of the Caliphate by Ataturk and the Treaty of Lausanne, to why Pushtuns in the tribal regions of […]

Pakistan Aftermath On the last words of the Pakistani clerical leader at the Red Mosque, see Manan Ahmad’s posting at ICGA, as well as my own entry.

Al Franken’s Successful Fundraising Minnesota Senate Race at Stake Iraq an Issue for Coleman Al Franken is proving himself a formidable political fundraiser as he revs up his campaign to be the Democrat who faces Neoconservative Senator Norm Coleman in the ’08 elections. It is tiresome that some observers dismissed Mr. Franken because he is […]

Informed Comment: Global Affairs Our new group blog, Informed Comment: Global Affairs has gotten favorable notice in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Speaking of which, contributors have made some very important entries in the past couple of days. Barnett Rubin, among the world’s foremost experts on Afghanistan explains why he is a “pessoptimist” on the […]

Physicians of Fear My column at Salon.com this week is “Inside the minds of killer doctors”: Some of the accused behind the recent terror plots in Britain were professional healers. What on earth prompts someone to snap from caregiver to killer? Excerpt: “the actions of the group in Britain were too erratic and error-prone to […]

“Al-Qaeda” in Iraq Threatens Iran Thousands of Sadrists Demonstrate against al-Maliki The “Islamic State in Iraq” led by Abu Umar al-Bagdadi, has theatened to target Iran unless it ceases its support for Shiite groups in Iraq. Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, a right hand man of Saddam who still leads a major Baathist cell in the north, […]

Car Bomb Kills 22 Clashes in Samawah Parliament vote on Oil Bill Murky Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that parliament is scheduled to debate the draft petroleum bill on Saturday. It says that the Sadr Movement, loyal to fundamentalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is rumored to be ending its boycott of parliament. The absence of those […]

Libby was the Small Fish Bush really Commuted the Sentences of Rove and Cheney George H. W. Bush called those who leak the names of CIA operatives “the most insidious of traitors.” In his son’s administration, CIA covert operative Valerie Plame’s name was leaked to the press to punish her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, […]