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POPS"We're Not Dangerous...We're Persian!" While it's hard to beat the hilarity of his opening bit, Iranian comedian Jobrani's entire politically incorrect routine is online: 1 , 2 . Sometimes you just gotta laugh at the seriousness of the world.... (Via The Daily Dish.)
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POPSIraq’s Curse: A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory A bloodthirsty sectarian war centuries in the making has only just begun. It's going to get much worse before it gets better. Caught in the middle of the civil war are the Americans. To Iraq’s factions, they are the weakest of all the armed groups in one crucial respect: their will is ebbing and their time here is limited. That leaves Iraqis more motivated than ever to cling to their weapons, preparing for what many see as an inevitable plunge into the abyss. “Everyone — the Sunni, the Shia — is playing the waiting game,” an Iraqi leader told me over dinner at his home in the Green Zone. “They’re waiting out the Americans. Everyone is using time against you.”
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POPSThe Stick Figure Guide to Winning in Iraq As described in the article, the creator of this humorous, optimistic cartoon, a young Captain Travis Patriquin, was killed by an improvised explosive device in Iraq just last Wednesday. His creation has been circulating among the troops and, lately, across the internet. PDF version of the presentation .
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POPSLeaked White House Memo Questions Maliki's Competency “We returned from Iraq convinced we need to determine if Prime Minister Maliki is both willing and able to rise above the sectarian agendas being promoted by others,” the memo says. “Do we and Prime Minister Maliki share the same vision for Iraq? If so, is he able to curb those who seek Shia hegemony or the reassertion of Sunni power? The answers to these questions are key in determining whether we have the right strategy in Iraq.”
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POPSTen Ways to Make Sure That Peace Stays Dead Too many people on each side see the other as wholly culpable. Too many people on each side see themselves as wholly innocent, wholly victimized, ill-served by the well-meaning, abandoned by former allies, betrayed by the media, misunderstood by people who should know better, forgotten by the world. Too many people on each side see only the suffering that has been caused them. Too many people have learned to wall themselves off from the suffering that they have caused.
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POPSIs a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more? Must-read, in-depth article from Seymour Hersh on the lengthy lead-up to Rumsfeld's ouster (he was kept in the dark until the end!), what the new leadership of Secretary of Defense Gates might signal, the dwindling options Rumsfeld's war has left us in Iraq, and the renewed neoconservative clamor to invade Iran to make up for the loss in Iraq. (Double down on Tehran.) The Pentagon consultant said that he and many of his colleagues in the military believe that Iran is intent on developing nuclear-weapons capability. But he added that the Bush Administration’s options for dealing with that threat are diminished, because of a lack of good intelligence and also because "we’ve cried wolf" before.
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POPSSaddam Trial 'Fundamentally Flawed' Say US Observers “Judging Dujail” reports previously undocumented and serious procedural flaws in the trial, including: regular failure to disclose key evidence, including exculpatory evidence, to the defense in advance; violations of the defendants’ basic fair trial right to confront witnesses against them; lapses of judicial demeanor that undermined the apparent impartiality of the presiding judge; and important gaps in evidence that undermine the persuasiveness of the prosecution case, and put in doubt whether all the elements of the crimes charged were established. At stake is not only justice for hundreds of thousands of victims but, as at Nuremberg, the historical record itself.... Executing while other trials are ongoing will also deprive many thousands of victims of their day in court.
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POPSProminent conservative surveys the wreckage of contemporary conservatism The entire article is highly reccommended for those that want to trace the GOP's post-9/11 "stumble into neoconservatism" from an insider's perspective. Bramwell's honesty and way with words are refreshing. Until recently, it has been almost impossible for me to speak candidly about the conservative movement, for it was my strange fate to serve as director and later trustee of the movement’s flagship journal, National Review. Earlier this year, at William F. Buckley’s request, I resigned both positions. I can therefore now declare what perhaps has oft been thought but never, at least not often enough, expressed. Notwithstanding conservatives’ belief that they, in contrast to their partisan opponents, have thought deeply about the challenges facing the United States, it is they who have become unserious.
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POPSRemember: Saddam Was Our Man NY Times OpEd from March 14, 2003. The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad -- for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq. This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.
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POPSSaddam Hussein Is Sentenced to Death International legal experts and human rights observers have questioned the impartiality of the trial court, which was created to try top leaders of the ousted government during the 15-month period of formal American occupation following the invasion in the spring of 2003. "We saw this trial, along with the others, as an opportunity to bring justice to those Iraqis who had suffered horribly under Baath Party rule," Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Sunday. "Unfortunately, we believe the serious shortcomings in the fairness of the proceedings undermined the legitimacy and credibility of the trial."
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POPSPrisoners Tortured, Killed in Afghanistan by US Army Part 1 of an exclusive by the LA Times on self-admitted detainee abuse and deaths at the hands of US Special Forces. The subsequent military cover-ups could go as far back as 2002. Most of the bases singled out by the agency were under the control of National Guardsmen with the Alabama-based 20th Special Forces Group. The compound at Gardez, then occupied by ODA 2021, was portrayed as one of the worst. Detainees there alleged they were beaten, kicked, doused with cold water and deprived of sleep for days at a time. ... "You have so much freedom and authority over there," one member of ODA 2021 said. "It kind of makes you feel like God when you're out there in cowboy and Indian country."
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