That Saddam has been tried for past atrocities is in most respects a positive development for Iraq. The use of capital punishment, however, might be symbolic of a systemic flaw in the US approach to the occupation since the fall of Baghdad.
With self-serving mea culpas abound, and more and more people taking a stern [...]

Congrats bloggers, you beat Ahmadinejad!

Stengel said if the magazine had decided to go with an individual, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the likely choice. “It just felt to me a little off selecting him,” Stengel said.

Question, why can’t Time pick an unpleasant character as person of the year? Is it [...]

Newt (the new, mild mannered iteration) is one of those guys who sounds reasonable 95% of the time and then says something truly off the wall. In interviews it happens about every 5 minutes or so, and is often just a passing reference. Meet the Press this morning was a case in point. He [...]

One would be hard pressed to find a more venerable beltway foreign policy panel: Hass, the CFR realist. Cohen, the SAIS pragmatist. Adelman, the unapologetic neocon. Ricks, the war-battered (and Pulitzer forthcoming) journalist. No bleeding heart? Nope, this was to be a ‘serious’ hard-nosed assessment. Needless to say, I watched [...]

Paraphrasing from the weekend update: “Today Al Gore called the invasion of Iraq the worst policy in American History. Disagreeing with him: Slaves.” Nothing like a little perspective!

A belated call out to three friends in the blogosphere:
First, a good friend and co-author David Eaves has finally started an eponymous blog. For as smart a guy with as many ideas as him, this is a natural and a long time coming.
Second, Adrian Bradbury, of Gulu Walk fame, has started a group blog [...]

While I have admittedly been absent for a while, I have been reading the site regularly, and on the issue of support for the Iraq war, let me just say the following. I was decisively against the war. I wrote extensively on this position, spoke about it to anyone who would [...]

The energy in the Palais des Congres in Montreal is truly astonishing. I haven’t slept in days and am huddled in the Ignatieff war room, watching and working with the rounds of votes coming in and dashing in and out of the convention hall. The energies in each are like [...]