That means you, Christopher Buckley. And you, Andrew Exum. Even though you were just telling Buckley to pipe down, and I commend that as both a general proposition and in this particular instance, it’s probably better to just ignore this one, like you would a street preacher. But I recognize there’s a certain demand here. [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 846-09 October 29, 2009 DoD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Spc. Brandon K. Steffey, 23, of Sault Sainte Marie, Mich., died Oct. 25 in Laghman province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with [...]

Or at least I take this to be The Billy Corgan. I am not a doctor, and I am in no way suggesting that you should follow any medical advice from me. What you do with your body, what you put into it, who you allow to love it or hate on it, is your [...]

Najim al-Jabouri wrote about pervasive security-service sectarianism in Iraq, and then this happens: Sixty-one army and police officers have been arrested in connection with the bombings in central Baghdad on Sunday that killed 155 people and wounded hundreds more, Iraqi officials said Thursday. Jabouri even wrote, “These political schisms are partly responsible for coordinated terrorist [...]

Pat: John McCain points out that “[f]or the first time since September 11, 2001, America is having a vigorous national debate about how to succeed in Afghanistan.”  I’d point out that debating something is pretty hard when you’re not paying attention to it.

Here’s a good op-ed from Najim al-Jabouri, the former mayor of Tal Afar, that goes into some detail about the pervasive and persistent sectarianism within the Iraqi security forces. These paragraph, for instance, crystallize the problem in alarming ways: [T]he Fifth Iraqi Army Division, in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad, has been under the sway [...]

Adam Serwer has a good piece in the American Prospect looking at the role human rights plays in counterinsurgency. I particularly like this observation he extracted from Sarah Sewall, a top Obama-campaign adviser: Sarah Sewall, a human rights expert at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard and a former deputy assistant secretary of [...]

Via Andrew Exum, a wild ride of a movie made, apparently, just for me. As best as I can figure this out from the trailer, Matt Damon is like a one-man Iraq Survey Group hunting for the WMDs, only to discover that it was all an elaborate lie. That lie was perpetrated by Greg Kinnear’s [...]

My friend and colleague Dave Weigel — the premiere chronicler of the contemporary American conservative movement — appears to have had a freakout over the fact that he has no Wikipedia entry. (Or, more precisely, that he had one mysteriously taken down shortly after it was created — a creation also shrouded in third-party mystery.) [...]

What other song could I possibly use for this post? Sluggahjells thought I should have used it for the ALCS. But I knew — knew! — the biggest stage still awaited the Yankees. Who’s going to win this series? I have no idea. For the last four days, we’ve all read a lot about how [...]