Another year, another faux controversy about the secular humanists, liberal atheists, and assorted no-goodniks stealing Christmas from the righteous and god-faring. Their methods haven't changed much from last year: preventing municipalities from establishing religious icons on public property without equal time for other religious displays and, most shockingly of all, forcing the employess of megacorporations to say "Happy Holidays!" rather...

What would happen to Iraq if America withdrew almost immediately?In other words, what would happen if Representative Murtha's proposal was implemented? Gary Boatwright at Seeing the Forest is taking this question seriously -- as is Nir Rosen in The Atlantic Monthly.The conventional wisdom, is that the violence would worsen as Iraq moves toward civil war. The Iraqi government would be unable to govern and Iraq might become a failed state. That's...

[updated on 12.4.05]I know I promised to comment on the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, but to be honest it isn't worth the effort and I don't know if I have the strength. Those who read this blog are intelligent enough to see the Victory Stratey for what it is--a transparent attempt to mollify the administration's critics and reverse the declining trend in public opinion for the war.The 'strategy' is simply a collection of regurgitated,...

President Bush spoke at the US Naval academy today. His theme? Well, Bush wants to close off talk of troop withdrawal from Iraq:These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders -- not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington. (Applause.)Some are calling for a deadline for withdrawal. Many advocating an artificial timetable for withdrawing our...

I don't have time to comment on the document yet since I just got my hands on it, but I will definitely post my thoughts soon. In the meantime, here is a link to the full-text.Filed as: Iraq, Exit Strategy

An excellent piece by Justin Webb at the BBC on the ongoing war on science by evangelical christians in the US and its impact on politics and the Republican party.Patrick has previously blogged about so-called "intelligent design" and I don't think I can improve on his points, suffice it to say that I am fervent supporter of evolution and rational science. Whether or not there is a higher power is a question beyond my faculties--agnostic is the...

Why, oh why do people continue to assert that the US is required in any way to defend Taiwan in the case of an attack by mainland China? The latest example of this fallacy comes from an AFP report from Monday. The article recounts Chinese President Hu Jintao's restatement of China's position on Taiwanese independence. At the end of the article we come across this statement:Despite switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979,...

Josh Marshall asks if Abu Musab Zarqawi is really the mastermind behind Mesopotamian jihadism.It it is hard not to see this information in the light of the fairly constant tendency through the War on Terror to build up varous Terrorist Masterminds, who become the focus of most or all news reportage, then trail off into nothing. Not infrequently, they have an uncanny resemblance to characters out of 1984. And with Zarqawi particularly there is a...

My 18-month old daughter is in a binge-reading phase. She hunts for a book, carries it over to any adult who happens to be in the vicinity, and presents it while exclaiming "Enh! Ehn! Booshk! Enh! Enh!" Sometimes she will jab one finger while insisting "Sit! Sit! Sit!" In either case, her appetite for being read to is boundless. Which means my wife and I read the same books. Over and over and over and over. Between the three of us, we make a...

Just wanted to wish my fellow members of the Duck as well as our readership a Happy Thanksgiving.

Journalist James Bamford has a tremendously explosive story about the Rendon Group in Rolling Stone magazine (posted November 17, 2005). The story mentions some of the Rendon group's activites over much of the past twenty years, "selling" virtually every war and military intervention the US has fought since Panama.Most of the article is about Iraq's non-existent WMD.For some years, the Rendon Group has been a Defense Department contractor,...