Well. It looks like Bush has not only latched on to the AEI so-called plan for Iraq, he’s been willing to fire his generals to do it (This mentioned on BBC News tonight – Eric Martin confirms it. Looks like it’s a sailor at CENTCOM and Petraeus in Iraq. Could be worse). Worse, he’s actually…
Read More Privatisation in excelsisYet more stupid giant floating radar news. Not only can’t it keep the sea if the weather turns bad, not only is there no sea boat, and no security – but its support vessel won’t be able to go alongside it most of the time, according to the US Coast Guard. This really is one…
Read More I see a ship in the harbourVia Pat Lang’s, the American Enterprise Institute’s plan for yet another atttempt to secure Baghdad. You won’t be very surprised to learn that neither Lang, nor I, think very much of it. Peter Kagan’s strategy – a PowerPoint presentation, natch – is risible. The first and most basic fault is the frantic insistence on victory,…
Read More The generals bow to the government: they’re tired of the truthYou may recall that we’ve followed the career of the Iraqi Special Forces, née Ministry of the Interior Commandos, née 36th ICDC Battalion in some detail. This force is one of the few reasonably capable Iraqi units, made up of a mix of exiles and SCIRI Badr Corps men. Kazimi has a mildly hagiographic post…
Read More The Colonel of the 36thThe war comes to Iraq the Model. A modest proposal, if I may. Comments like this one are not “supporting Iraqi democracy”: Congratulations Mohammed. You and your neighbors have taken the first step toward democracy and living as free people. It appears you are coming to the realization that being “free” comes with taking the…
Read More Supporting Iraqi democracyApparently the alternative to the Baker commission/TYR solution in Iraq – get the fuck out under a negotiated settlement with Iran – that the White House is floating is a “tilt to the Shia and Kurdish 80 per cent. I find it a little hard to work out how we are meant to tilt to…
Read More Pinball WizardThere seems to be an increasing belief around that we’re still in Iraq because the UK/USA leaders can’t bring themselves to book a loss, as Ezra Klein puts it over at Tapped. David Kurtz at TPM argues similarly that Bush thinks the only way the US can be defeated is if it chooses to leave…
Read More Enron and IraqThere’s been plenty of debunking aimed at the Weekly Standard‘s claim that more US troops in Iraq always means less violence, but I haven’t seen this point. Stuntz argues that 18,000 more troops were deployed between November, 2004 and February, 2005, and the butcher’s bill fell. Well, it would. November, 2004 was the peak of…
Read More GoalpostsCan Iain Dale really be so ignorant of the world as to wonder why no-one votes Conservative in Rotherham? Please. A bit of humility would be becoming. Responsibility is too much to ask, I realise, but it’s because you shut down their steelworks.
Read More What planet is he on?A non-Christian demands that everyone else in Europe become Christian, or more so if they are already, and someone immediately leaps in to defend her by arguing that it is “risible” that the generation who are fighting the war she propagandised “would fight for anything more than a football team.” One of the sickest things…
Read More A double dose of hypocrisy