The definitive last word on Bret Stephens, Lady Gaga, Haifa Wehbe, Nancy Ajram, Palestine-or-Western-decadence-as-takfiri-motivator, Sayyid Qutb and deliberate stupefaction belongs to the Norse God Of Counterterrorism. By Odin’s Beard! How do we know that Palestine is more important than Westernization for the anti-American jihadists? First, al Qaeda’s leaders have spoken more often about Palestine and other [...]

So who does Moqtada al-Sadr hate more these days — Nouri al-Maliki or Iyad Allawi? Both have tried to crush him. Maliki’s just the most recent to attempt it. According to the Times, Sadr has a creative way to demonstrate that he’s the real boss of the Iraqi parliament: his people are going to hold [...]

This is a beginning. I’m hearing that Sec. Clinton will make a speech next week, probably on Friday the 9th after returning from the Prague signing of New START, in Sen. McConnell’s home state to urge ratification of the new nuclear arms-reduction treaty. Officials are pretty upbeat — way more than I’ve been — about [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 255-10 March 31, 2010 DOD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Pfc. James L. Miller, 21, of Yakima, Wash., died March 29 in Dashat, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device. [...]

Psych! I don’t care either. But I see the Duck of Minerva has a guestpost up about Robert Fowler’s recent let’s-dream-big-Canada comments that I touched on yesterday, so I figured I’d link.

Via a tip from Daniel Lippmann, Jeff Weintraub has found an interesting theory floating around Egyptian circles: Heavy metal music is a Zionist plot A “well-funded Zionist campaign,” no less, to promote Satan worship, drug addiction, “abomination,” and the like, all in pursuit of “the real and stated goal of global Zionism,” namely “ruling the [...]

@MikeDrewWhat tweets at me: I’d read a post on the situ. in Russia and how we might expect it it to affect cooperation with West on CT, Iran, other items. …don’t know if you’re the guy to write that post or not, but I’d read it. Honesty compels me to say that I’m not the [...]

Pal and one-time guestblogger Ian Moss has a good Huffington Post piece recommending a way his Marine Corps and the rest of the military could implement an end to the discriminatory policy, and notes repeal’s relationship to the further repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act: A recent report from The Center for American Progress provides [...]

This is from a Dexter Filkins piece about Ahmed Wali Karzai, a man accused of being a drug facilitator, CIA asset, and warlord/militia connection and who is indisputably the Afghan president’s brother and a Kandahar elected official: He is also one of the area’s biggest entrepreneurs, with business and real estate ventures across southern Afghanistan. [...]

Am I wrong to view this DARPA Initiative as a response to Maj. Gen. Flynn’s Critique of Pure Enemy-Centric Intelligence Analysis? The agency is hosting a proposal workshop for Graph Understanding and Analysis for Rapid Detection – Deployed on the Ground (priceless acronym: GUARD-DOG). Ideally, Darpa wants a replacement for current war-zone human intelligence, called HUMINT, [...]