I am decidedly soft on Jim Glassman, the Dow 36,000 co-author who became George W. Bush’s undersecretary of state for public diplomacy — and, in my opinion, he’s been the only person who has done that job justice. This, however, is absolutely crackers. Glassman is in charge of opening Bush’s presidential library, and — well, [...]

Andrew Exum really puts his back into this post. This is bound to strain Eikenberry’s relationship with Hamid Karzai and the U.S. military. Within U.S. military circles, expect grumbling about who, exactly, was in charge during the years (2005-2007) in which the war in Afghanistan took a turn for the worse. The answer? Karl Eikenberry, [...]

Update, 9:43 a.m., Nov. 13: Double-urg. I have to retract this, with great regret and apology. I posted an explanation of why here. Update, 11:40 p.m.: Urg. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor says he talked to Eikenberry’s people and the teleconference call I reported here did not occur. I will have much, much more later. [...]

I may not be that man, but Tom Ricks is. And my favorite part of this post is an admission he makes about the choice of photograph. And yeah, I know I am not Derek Jeter by tom ricks on Wed, 11/11/2009 – 5:32pm I didn’t pick this photo! I just asked for an image [...]

And now I have summed up this Washington Post piece. For more straight-laced commentary — and it would be hard to produce less – see this post of mine. You know what’s unfortunate about the Post piece? It contains so many great pieces of reporting that aren’t Eikenberry-related but had to be cobbled into the [...]

Kick-AssTrailer Park | MySpace VideoWe truly live in the golden age of fanboydom. Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. (JRJR is the scion of one of Marvel’s greatest creators, who has risen to that rank in his own right) have made, to date, seven issues of an extremely filthy, impolite, violent and hysterical send-up of [...]

Fresh out from The Washington Independent: a lot of internal worries about the commitment of Rajiv Shah, the brand-new nominee to head USAID, to the agency’s development and governance missions. [S]ome USAID program managers and contractors, the people whom Obama tapped Shah to oversee as USAID’s next administrator, aren’t happy. In a series of emails [...]

I’ll be on the BBC’s World Tonight radio programme, talking about the Obama administration’s Afghanistan/Pakistan deliberations. I’m told the hit is at sometime between 5:15-30 p.m. — wait, sorry, I mean around a quarter past midnight GMT maybe 23:15 GMT. Something like that.

Greg Sargent quotes a GOP aide: “There better be a hell of a compelling reason for ignoring the advice of our generals on the ground or Republicans will ensure that this Administration spend the next few years explaining to the American people how dismissing our military’s advice has made our troops and our country safer,” [...]

Got assigned a review and then the piece was spiked. Ah well, these things happen. Anyway, I’m not realistically going to sell this review anywhere, so, after the jump, a zombie 1200 words on TMWSAG. Just want to let you know in advance: anyone who’s planning on commenting, “I see why they spiked it” — [...]