Come January 1, U.S. troops will be in Iraq most likely under a new, bilateral Status of Forces Agreement with strict stipulations as to where they can operate and how.
Here’s what I’m wondering:
Will MNF-I still embed reporters? If so, under what rules? Will journalists still be able to flit in and out on military flights [...]
Archive for November, 2008
Iraq and Foreign Media: Embedding Under SOFA?
Posted in Iraq on November 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Is Obama’s Presidency Clinton III, and Should We Care?
Posted in Election 08 on November 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“While Mr. Obama has yet to name any of his cabinet secretaries,” The New York Times reports today, “his early choices for White House staff positions and the names currently at the top of the list for staff and cabinet jobs suggest that his administration could be heavily stocked with Democrats who served under Mr. [...]
Iraq and SOFA: Leaving a Mess or Cleaning Up?
Posted in Iraq, SOFA on November 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Want a hyper-cynical take on SOFA? Here’s Andrew Sullivan’s:
[The hard right] will try to argue that Obama’s choice to withdraw has led to a victory for al Qaeda and that the Democrats have stabbed American troops in the back. (You can almost write Palin’s primary campaign message three years ahead of time.) But now that [...]
Lament for the Magazine
Posted in Media on November 17, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Browsing my RSS reader one night last week I came across a shocking post by Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic Monthly:
My editors at the Atlantic have never put pressure on me to hawk any product or call attention to anything in the print magazine or even to shill for subscriptions.
That’s one of the reasons I [...]
How ‘Invasive’ Is Obama’s Vetting Questionnaire?
Posted in Election 08 on November 13, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The New York Times reports:
A seven-page questionnaire being sent by the office of President-elect Barack Obama to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts may be the most extensive — some say invasive — application ever.
Actually, that’s not true.
The vetting process designed by Dick Cheney and David Addington for Bush’s VP search in 2000 included [...]
Iraq: Kaplan’s Prediction Comes True?
Posted in Iraq on November 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Last week, just two days before the U.S. presidential election, Robert Kaplan predicted in a LAT op-ed that if Obama is elected, there will be “a measurable uptick in violence in Iraq”:
The uptick will be significant enough to muddy the results of the surge, and the president-elect, rather than respond vigorously, will be tempted to [...]
The Gitmo Debate: Recommended Reading
Posted in Human rights on November 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Now that the debate over the closing of Guantanamo Bay is heating up, and some loony arguments have started to fly back and forth, I’d like to recommend a very good book to read. No — it’s not Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, nor Torture Team by Philippe Sands. I mean Law and the Long [...]
Coming Soon: Bush the Adult
Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq on November 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
After George W. Bush leaves the White House on January 20, here’s what the narrative’s going to look like:
Yes, he made mistakes — and some real stinkers, too. But the last two years weren’t actually so bad. After all, the nastiest scumbags departed Justice and Defense, didn’t they? He did replace Rumsfeld with Gates, didn’t [...]
Iraq: The Problem with ‘Conditional Engagement’
Posted in Iraq on November 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
With U.S. leverage dwindling in Iraq, the Obama-Biden plan for “conditional engagement” may prove faulty, Reidar Visser suggests:
What appears to be missing in these assumptions is an appreciation of some of what happened in Iraq in 2007. This is not to suggest that ‘the surge’ was such a wonderful success. So far, no significant political [...]
Good Luck, And Good Night
Posted in Election 08 on November 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Spent a long night alone at work hammering out an election piece against a mercifully extended deadline — and made it, thanks to the swift verdict of the American voters. Maybe it was because of exhaustion, or simply because the moment was frankly overwhelming, but when the race was called at 6 AM Finnish time, [...]
