Russian President Vladamir Putin announced today that he has ordered the Russian Federal Security Service to “find and destroy” those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Russian diplomats in Iraq (for background on the story, see here).The announcement by Putin was followed by a statement passed in the lower house of the Russian parliament criticizing the “occupying countries” (i.e. the United States), noting that they have lost...

I knew that there was a large problem as soon as I pulled my car out of the driveway. There was entirely too much traffic running through my normally quiet suburban neighborhood -- we're kind of buried back in the middle of a tangle of winding streets, so we don't usually get many people driving through on their way to someplace. But there were a lot of cars out, driving in a slow line that bore all the characteristics of the blind leading the...

...I submit the latest from Ted Rall (click here for larger image) :I will leave aside the weak argumentation about the lack of importance of Afghanistan to the fight against al-Qaeda (however, who the hell cares where Bin Laden was physically on 9/11/01?? Wow, great argument Ted...), but will take issue with his claim at the end that Pakistan had a female President.Here is a list of past Presidents in Pakistan. Maybe I am missing something,...

Over the weekend former defense secretary Richard Perle wrote an op-ed for the WaPo excoriating—no, not the Democrats, but Neoconservatives' other favorite punching bad—the State Department for the current standoff with Iran over its nuclear program.Besides throwing in the now requisite amount of references to resolve, appeasement, etc, etc, Perle makes the unusual claim that we should have “…referred the matter to the U. N. Security Council...

In April I discussed a story making the rounds that the Bush administration failed to take Iran up on an offer to talk about its weapons program and support for anti-Israeli terrorists shortly after the President declared the end of 'major hostilities' in Iraq. Of course, whether the offer was legitimate or some sort of ploy has been debated a great deal. Stygius and Kingdaddy broatch the topic yet again and discuss its strategic implications...

It was revealed this week that the Bush Administration:has secretly been tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years, according to U.S. government and industry officials.Initiated shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the surveillance program has used a broad new interpretation of the Treasury Department's administrative powers to bypass traditional banking privacy protections. It has swept in large...

Just saw this headline at the BBC: Iran calls halt to petrol importsI have no evidence for this statement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Iran was somehow readying itself and the public for potential punitive sanctions by the West, which may include disruptions to imported, refined oil.For all the oil Iran produces and exports its refining capacity is sub-par, making them dependent on imported oil (yeah, it's wierd I know). Just a...

Sunship has alerted me to some problems with the XML feed. Feedburner has detected two sets of problems:1. We're using 0.3 rather than 1.0. I'm not sure how to change this. If someone could let me know, I'd appreciate it.2. Peter wrote his first post using a wysiwyg editor, and that created some series serious markup garbage that seems to be creating problems for XML. As an experiment, I've pulled his introductory post. Could someone let me...

In previous posts and other arenas I have argued that the Iraq War could not be explained simply by the threat of WMDs, the desire to liberate the Iraqi people, to spread democracy, to uphold the credibility of the UN, etc, etc. My point was that you must look at the operation in the larger context of a global struggle against innumerable threats to US security, both state- and non-state based, where the US for all its power recognized its...

Apparently, three protestors dressed like clowns (no, literally, circus clowns) broke into a nuclear launch facility in North Dakota and, I am not kidding about this, used a sledgehammer to disable the lock on the personnel entry hatch of a Minuteman III missile that provides access to the warhead and then hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead.The three staged the event in part "to call for national repentance for...

Today's maxim seems particularly appropriate, given recent discussions about Iraq and the potential for military conflict with Iran and North Korea.The worst enemy of someone who begins a war is his belief in easy victory. For no matter how simple and certain it appears, a war is subject to a thousand accidents. And the confusion these accidents create will be even greater if they happen to someone who has not prepared his mind and his forces...

In case anyone had any doubts about the moral relativism of certain segments of the right-wing anti-terror warrior-punditry, Wretched provides a useful reminder. Sleep Management, Stress Positions, Change of Scenery, Dietary Manipulation, Environmental Manipulation and Sensory Deprivation have already been acknowledged as unacceptable treatment, even for the hard core of the enemy. But surely these tiny cells were as bad as anything the Nazis...