How did I not see until just now that Tom Ricks, the best defense reporter in America, has launched a blog at Foreign Policy’s website? Check out what he found in a just-released Army War College report:

 "HAMAS’ political and strategic development has been both ignored and misreported in Israeli and Western sources which villainize the group, much as the PLO was once characterized as an anti-Semitic terrorist group," writes Sherifa Zuhur, a research professor at the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. "Negotiating solely with the weaker Palestinian party-Fatah-cannot deliver the security Israel requires. . . . The underlying strategies of Israel and HAMAS appear mutually exclusive . . . . Yet each side is still capable of revising its desired endstate and of necessary concessions to establish and preserve a long-term truce, or even a longer-term peace."

Abu Muqawama — who, just as I predicted, is as retired from blogging as Jay-Z is from rapping — says Ricks will put him out of business. That hits really close to home. I’ll never be as judicious or knowledgeable as Tom, but I am vastly more profane. Please don’t stop reading this blog.

Update: Foreign Policy is turning into a for-pol blogger murderers’ row. Calderone reports that in addition to Ricks and Marc Lynch, they’re bringing on Stephen "Israel Lobby" Walt, Dan Drezner, Laura Rozen, David Rothkopf, a group blog called Madame Secretary and a conservative for-pol group blog called Shadow Government.

That latter group blog is a good idea in theory. You should want a smart critique from the loyal opposition, and Phil Zelikow and Peter Feaver are certainly qualified. The trouble with policymaker or potential-policymaker blogs is that no one wants to say anything that could create a stumbling block at a far-off Senate confirmation hearing. That’s one of the reasons why TPMCafe’s old America Abroad group blog of Very Serious People failed. You’d have a slaughter one day in Iraq, total policy lassitude in Afghanistan, and if you went over to America Abroad you’d see the page topped by a week-old Lee Feinstein post about Japan or something. Hopefully Shadow Government won’t be similarly anodyne or anti-rigorous, but experience points to inherent difficulties with this.