After several years of being on the receiving end of sleazy “why do you hate the troops?” attacks, I suppose I can understand why John Aravosis would be eager for an opportunity to turn the tables, but for reasons Jim Henley lays out pretty well, that doesn’t make it any less of a stupid sacrifice […]

[Read more →]

For reasons somewhat mysterious to me, I’ve been invited to join an impressive roster of heavies guestblogging at Steve Clemons’ The Washington Note for the next week. Check in there if you like, though I’ll try to remember to note it here when I post something at TWN.

[Read more →]

This ABC News story on CIA interrogation tactics is old news by now, but there was one section I’d meant to comment on: Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, […]

[Read more →]

So, I’m generally happy to see this Heritage report on the composition of the military, which—contra most draft boosters—finds that recruits don’t tend to come from poorer or lowers class backgrounds in some massively disproportionate way. But I found it a little puzzling that The Corner‘s K-Lo chose to quote the following excerpt from a […]

[Read more →]

The desperation in the dwindling ranks of the full-throated hawks provokes pity more than contempt these days, mostly because of stuff like this embarrassing putative “deconstruction” of an AP piece about this weekend’s anti-war protests. The first objection is to the headline: “Anti-War Protesters March in Washington: Thousands of Anti-War Demonstrators March in Washington, London; […]

[Read more →]

Cue “I Got You Babe,” because it looks like the Iraq–Al Qaeda “connection” argument is getting a second act. Yglesias mentioned this weekend that it seemed as though some memo had gone out announcing it was time to revive the claim that Osama and Saddam were BFF, and sure enough, next time I check Instapundit, […]

[Read more →]

I should be beyond surprise of this sort, but it’s still a little striking to see self-righteous dudgeon and disingenuous horseshit combined in such close proximity and copious quantity. Glenn’s reminding everyone of his “link-rich refutation” of the “revisionist” claim that democracy promotion wasn’t part of the rationale for invading Iraq. Since most of his […]

[Read more →]

“[One possibility is that] the Americans will decide to use the atomic bomb while they have it and the Russians haven’t….In any case this is, I think, the least likely outcome of the three, because a preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy.” —George Orwell, […]

[Read more →]

The attitude expressed in this column seems to be surprisingly common: The success of the [Iraqi] elections poses a major intellectual-moral-political problem for people in this city. The cognitive dissonance is palpable.[…] Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his […]

[Read more →]