David Hackworth speaks out

Is intelligence just politics by other means?

Life during wartime

Did I say that?

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

The bombs that may cook Bush’s goose

Weapons? What weapons?

Oh, man… I don’t even know where to BEGIN with this one. Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most […]

John Callendar is running an interesting piece entitled “ Media Coverage and the War at Home” that examines how the decreasing quality of journalism in America has affected the climate in his area: [W]hat about that nearly 70% of US citizens that are getting their news from the cable news channels? It gets worse with […]

Well, isn’t this interesting….

CNN journalist Kevin Sites, who closed down his blog at the request of the network, has come back online with a stunner — apparently he was captured and held hostage by Iraqi paratroopers outside Tikrit. He’s got an audio account of his experience posted on the site. Sounds like the war’s not over everywhere…

Hey, now you can’t say nobody ever put flowcharting software to good use.

Well, it would appear that the regime in Baghdad has finally collapsed, and good riddance to them. They’ve been a scar on the Islamic world since they seized power 24 years ago. It’s good to see Iraqis able to speak freely in the streets the way Americans are. I would, however, caution people about reading […]

John Robb is asking an interesting question: if we’re going to be fighting/occupying large parts of the Middle East for the foreseeable future, why doesn’t the US Army have an Arab Division? There are probably lots of patriotic Arab-Americans who’d be willing to volunteer, as well as non-citizens who’d be eager to serve in exchange […]

I’ve already noted one friendly fire incident from Iraq, but the BBC is running a story about another one that will send chills down your spine. BBC world affairs editor John Simpson was traveling with American Special Forces troops and Kurdish militia when his convoy came under attack by US Air Force F-15s: As I […]

The Miami Herald is reporting on an Army chaplain with V Corps who is taking advantage of a weeks-long water shortage by allowing baths in a 500-gallon water supply he’s gotten hold of, with one teensy condition: ”It’s simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,” he said. […]

If you have any doubts about how repressive the regime in Baghdad is, read the BBC’s account of the liberation of a base used by the Iraqi internal security police.  It’s pretty chilling.

The odd duck of the Air Force for the last twenty years has always been the A-10 Thunderbolt II. It’s a fearsome ground attack aircraft — the first the Air Force ever fielded that was specifically designed for the task.  The entire aircraft is actually built around its General Electric GAU-8/A cannon, a colossal Gatling […]

The Guardian is running an interesting story on its site describing an emerging consensus in the financial markets that we’re witnessing the beginning of a real decline in American power and influence in the world — the kind of decline that Britain suffered after World War II, the end of an empire. I hate the […]

While everybody is focusing on the fighting in southern Iraq, another crisis is brewing — despite warnings from the US and the EU, the Turks appear ready to cross their border with Iraq. While the Turks claim only peaceful intentions, it’s well known that they want to claim Iraqi Kurdistan to keep its people from […]

“The six lessons of 911” is an interesting piece looking at what we should have learned from our first brush with large-scale terrorism, and what we seem to have learned instead.

Fareed Zakaria has an excellent piece in Newsweek examining the underlying reasons for the world’s backlash against our Iraq policy, and how Bush and company have gotten us to where we are today. If you support the war and wonder why so many people around the world don’t — why anyone can have doubts about […]

Well, the “coalition of the willing” has spoken and it looks like 24 hours from now the bombs may be falling on Baghdad. Let’s hope that, if that’s the case, that things play out the way the Wolfowitzes and Perles have been predicting: a short, mostly bloodless conflict that results in a flowering of democracy […]

Kevin Sites is a “sojo” — solo broadcast journalist — who CNN has blogging from the front line between Iraq and Kuwait: We have two birds in our CNN workspace, Anthrax and Smallpox. Parakeets. But for us, canaries in the coal mine. Tiny, organic early warning systems against a chemical or biological attack… Our instructor, […]

After I posted my piece on Sy Hersh’s observations regarding Pakistan, I got to thinking about why I found them so provocative. After all, we all knew how much of a twisted little fellow Musharraf is, and how precarious his situation there is. (For those who don’t, all you need to know is that Musharraf […]