I will be spending the next couple of weeks on the road in Kentucky and Illinois on a pre-election assignment.
Posting will be very light.
Archive for September, 2008
Men at Work — Light Posting Will Continue
Posted in Misc on September 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Iraqi Parliament Passes Elections Law
Posted in Iraq, Iraq: Elections on September 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Finally. Abu Aardvark and Reidar Visser have more.
Afghanistan: A Driver’s Look at the Khost-Gardez Road
Posted in Afghanistan on September 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So they’re building a highway from Khost to Gardez.
I don’t have much to say about roads in Afghanistan, but I traveled on that rutted track quite a lot in 1991 when Haqqani was laying siege to Gardez, so I know something about this particular problem. True, it was rough going (particularly with Najib’s tank shells [...]
11 Die in Finland’s Latest Bout of Social Nausea
Posted in Misc on September 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As of this writing, 11 are dead in a shooting in a college in central Finland.
Why?
Yes, the tools were readily available — there are some 2 million firearms in this country of 5 million. And yes, there was no lack of models, as any expert on school killings will tell you. But I’m afraid the [...]
U.S. to Maliki: Play Nice with the SoI, Or… Or… Or…
Posted in Iraq on September 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
In a videolink press conference, Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who seems to have become Odierno’s tough talker, promised the American command would “closely monitor” how the Iraqi government treats the Baghdad area SoIs when it takes control of them next week.
I have just one question: What exactly will the U.S. do if Maliki decides to [...]
Iraq: Whose Army Is It, Anyway?
Posted in Iraq on September 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
One of the prerequisites for a functioning state is that the government, regardless of what party or faction runs it, retains a monopoly on violence. The Iraqi state, such as it is, suffers from so many seemingly incurable maladies that it’s easy to forget how terrifyingly simple these things actually are. Here’s how Abu Muqawama’s [...]
When the Lights Went Out in Baghdad
Posted in Iraq on September 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This is intriguing.
By studying the night-light signature of Baghdad, provided by weather satellite imagery, a team of UCLA geographers has concluded that the ethno-sectarian bloodshed in the Iraqi capital largely ended in early 2007 because Sunni neighborhoods emptied, not because of the much-vaunted increase in American troops.
Put simply, these guys looked at how the city [...]
New U.S. Afghan Strategy in the Making — Maybe
Posted in Afghanistan on September 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Bush administration is considering “changing its war strategy in Afghanistan in light of rising levels of violence and an increasingly complex insurgent threat”, AP reports.
In light of recent disclosures by NYT’s Michael Gordon and WP’s Bob Woodward, in his new book The War Within, on how the “surge” strategy for Iraq came into being, [...]
Iraq: Those “Fragile and Reversible” Security Gains
Posted in Iraq on September 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As he took over from Gen. David Petraeus yesterday, Gen. Ray Odierno made sure that whatever else would be quoted, one familiar refrain would make the headlines once again: that security gains in Iraq are “fragile and reversible”.
I googled “‘fragile and reversible” Iraq‘ and got 192,000 hits.
The cliche has been repeated by the Bush Administration [...]
Iraq: Holding Back a Flood of Hatred with One Finger
Posted in Iraq on September 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
In an interesting pair of stories, The Los Angeles Times today points out two conflicting facts:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is aggressively asserting his independence from the U.S., with the Iraqi army and police now operating “virtually on their own”…
… which they are not really ready to do, according to Odierno’s deputy, Lt. Gen. Lloyd [...]
