Oh hey look at this. Frank Ruggiero is the top U.S. (and I guess NATO) civilian in Afghanistan and has overseen the civilian “uplift” in Helmand and Kandahar. Don’t really know what it means that he’s leaving shortly after the anticipated Kandahar operation gets going in force — although my understanding is that there are [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 325-10 April 22, 2010 DOD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Sgt. Robert J. Barrett, 20, of Fall River, Mass., died April 19 in Kabul, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when a suicide bomber attacked his unit. He was [...]

For Alan Dershowitz, it’s what you might call a teachable moment. The J Street executive director parries Dershowitz’s dishonest offering by daring him to move past euphemism: You expose your own distortion on your own by quoting what I’ve really said – “resolving the conflict is not only necessary to secure Israel’s future, but also [...]

On Monday I leave for Guantanamo Bay for like 10 days. It’s possible I’ll come back earlier, as the thing-I’ll-be-covering could disappear in a puff of procedural haze, confusion and quasi-lawlessness. But I’ll be there for awhile. There is no journalist who works on just one story at a time. Well, maybe there is, but [...]

The Pentagon was going to have him speak at a prayer breakfast service. Then it remembered he’s an anti-Muslim bigot. So it disinvited him. Good for that five-sided building. And good for CAIR for putting the pressure on.

Inside a Post story about the Pakistani military’s increasing reliance on indefinite detention comes this odd assertion: Top U.S. officials have raised concern about the detentions with Pakistani leaders, fearing that the issue could undermine American domestic and congressional support for the U.S.-backed counterinsurgency campaign in Pakistan and jeopardize billions of dollars in U.S. assistance. [...]

So let’s do a link roundup. Rob Liefeld takes you deep inside his early creative processes. I want to commission a Kriston Capps critical essay. Adam Serwer is having fun today. Just received an email from the author of this academic study criticizing the Lancet’s Iraq mortality estimate. I haven’t yet read it. But the abstract [...]

Don’t miss M. LeBlanc’s follow-up to her epic Dude Rock post. Also, don’t read it to nitpick or to come up with this-or-that case refuting the thesis. That kind of indicates a certain defensiveness, don’t you think? Though I must say Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About > Lonesome Crowded West.

… that is, after he launched this verifiably-baseless critique of New START and missile defense. Three salient facts are beginning to emerge about President Obama’s approach to nuclear-weapons and missile defense policy. First, Obama will (very likely) be the president who actually maneuvers an economic sanctions package on Iran through the U.N. Security Council, and [...]

Torture enthusiast and perpetual infant Alan Dershowitz wants to attack J Street as anti-Israel because it believes in the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. He tries to triangulate J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami against Gen. Petraeus. He fails very badly and very predictably. The substance of Dershowitz’s attack on J Street concerns [...]