IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 913-09 November 20, 2009 DoD Identifies Navy Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a sailor who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Petty Officer 2nd Class Brian M. Patton, 37, of Freeport, Ill., died Nov. 19 in Kuwait in a non-combat accident. For further information related to this release, [...]

And they asked me to be one of their talking heads, along with Mother Jones‘ David Corn, Mike Tomasky of the Guardian and Democracy (who was kind enough to return a casserole dish to me after nearly a year; good looking, Mike) and Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy. At the risk of biting the hand [...]

I was asked on the radio yesterday whether Iraq’s sectarian wars are really over. With all the usual caveats, I replied that I think they are. Here’s a good example of why. Maliki arrests a prominent Awakening leader named Adil Mashhadani. There was a gun battle in Baghdad. Now Mashhadani has been sentenced to death. [...]

Explained here. A taste: But if Eikenberry is the interlocutor for the day-to-day and Clinton is the interlocutor for the biggest crises, then Holbrooke’s interlocutory role is rather less than clear, and now Karzai knows that if he doesn’t like what Holbrooke tells him, he gets a second bite at the apple with Clinton. Perhaps [...]

“I meet with the gays here and there. They were in my house two weeks ago. I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time. Certainly not in my kid’s face.” – Utah State Sen. Chris Buttars, who is lying like a goddamn bearskin rug on the [...]

Mark Leon Goldberg walks you through a new Congressional effort. Some provisions: * development of a U.S. government strategy to address conflict minerals; * support for further investigations by the U.N. Group of Experts; * mapping of which armed groups control key mines in eastern Congo; * inclusion of information on the negative impact of [...]

So I tried to do this nuanced piece for the Washington Independent. I stand by it. But you tell me if I succeeded. Obama creates this new top-level-detainee interrogation task force. It’s called the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group or the HIG. (Now is not the time to discuss precision in acronyms! This country faces ruthless [...]

Via Small Wars Journal, the Washington Times publishes an op-ed lavishing praise on the greatest Army officer of his generation for his farsightedness in demonstrating how a thorough security presence/posture combined with bolstered support for a host nation’s institutions of governance and rigorous subsidization of the tools for economic prosperity leads to a situation where [...]

In either trial forum, defendants will make an issue of how they were treated and attempt to undermine the trial politically. These efforts are likely to have more traction in a military than a civilian court. No matter how scrupulously fair the commissions are, defendants will criticize their relatively loose rules of evidence, their absence [...]

Possibly the best essay I’ve read all year: Sam McPheeters traces his old drummer/friend Brooks Headley’s post-punk rock second act as a premier pastry chef at, among other places, Komi, Galileo and Del Posto. So wonderfully written I don’t actually want to excerpt anything. Read the whole thing. I get credit for not headlining this [...]