This is pretty incredible:
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is prepared to spend an unprecedented $1 billion of his own $5.5 billion personal fortune for a third-party presidential campaign, personal friends of the mayor tell The Washington Times.
He has set aside $1 billion to go for it,” confided a long-time business adviser to the Republican [...]

The article I wrote with Ben Kiernan on the US bombing of Cambodia has been reprinted in Japan Focus.  The newer version was slightly updated and a few more maps were added. A critique of the piece sent to the Walrus is here and our reply is here. A series of zooms that [...]

Together, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have just become the second costliest in US history (as absolute dollars, not percentage of GDP). So what have other US wars cost? Below is a list from the Congressional Research Service, figs are in Billions of 2006 bucks.

The American Revolution: $1.54
War of 1812: $1.14
Mexican War: [...]

He tells two new stories. The first, I will let you read in his post, as I don’t want to paraphrase his highly personal account. As Sullivan comments, if true, it’s pretty disturbing. The second, is summed up in his concluding para:
Oh, yes, the hometown case: The ninth U.S. attorney. She is Debra Wong Yang, [...]

The latter was smitten and the former said a myriad of wild and wonderful things, as per usual. A couple of big quotes:
“The consequence of the Iraq war for the Middle East will be that it will be more dangerous to be a friend of the US than an enemy.”
“The Taliban is another name for [...]

Following the comments to my post about potential regional negotiations between the US, Iran and Syria on Iraq, I asked a friend, David Eaves (who moonlights as a negotiations consultant), how he might approach such talks.
Specifically, I asked: ‘how would you run ME regional talks on Iraq using negotiation theory? Say US, Syria and [...]

OK, so this is well trodden ground and I realize I am a broken record on this, but I really think that the strategic costs of civilian casualties are the central challenge of the peacebuilding effort in Afghanistan. This story, for example, perfectly captures the challenge facing NATO.  The circle between fighting neo-Taliban, accidentally killing [...]

I certainly think that US-Syria-Iran talks are a positive development, but I wonder what changed the administration’s calculus on this? Either something has moved empirically, or this should have happened long ago. I’d be curious to know which it is. If the former, what changed? If the latter, why now and not far sooner?

This morning, Bush defined success in Iraq as an ‘acceptable level of violence’. This argument ties withdrawal of American forces to the level of violence. In many ways, this logic is as problematic as a benchmarked timetable. If some insurgents want the US to leave, wouldn’t they just stop fighting until they do, and if [...]

These ICC arrest warrants in Darfur have been a long time coming. Several months ago I saw William Shabas speak, one of the principle lawyer/academics behind the ICC, and he was furious that Ocampo hadn’t moved on Sudan yet. It will also be interesting to see where they go with the N. Uganda indictments. [...]

- Biden was impressive. He schooled Russert by remembering what he said on MTP better than the host, and used his past quotes to his advantage. Why can he never win again?- Condi said that at time of invasion the Iraq threat was getting worse, not imminent. Further, she argued that this is [...]

While Rupert has his eyes on large market dailies, The Atlantic is scooping up the big shots of the blogosphere. Sullivan, Yglesias, Douthat and Fallows all now blogging under their banner. How long until we see a group blog a la Corner?
ps. What happened to America Abroad? I really liked it, but alas, [...]