after action review

IT SEEMS STRANGE, but I was better informed about current events in general, and the war in particular, before I joined the military. ... [read more]

Pythonesque

From a 12 June Time—sorry, TIME—magazine press release: TIME has obtained the first documented look inside the highly classified realm of military interrogations since the Gitmo Camp at Guantanamo Bay opened. The document is a secret 84-page interrogation log that... [read more]

the empire strikes back

Newsweek is offering another mea culpa. As most of you know, we have unequivocally retracted our story. In the light of the Pentagon's denials and our source's changing position on the allegation, the only responsible course was to say that... [read more]

assigned reading

On Monday I will be working on a followup post to last week's critique of Richard Lewontin. In the meantime, here are a few links that will keep you oh so very occupied. Last summer Norman Podhoretz wrote what is... [read more]

in defense of Rummy

Andrew Sullivan managed to wrench himself away from his bimonthly vacation long enough to stage an attempted fisking of Hanson. The link is here: but not like there’s much need to follow it. Just imagine a battle of wits between Maureen Dowd and William F. Buckley, Jr., with Sully in the role of elderly schoolgirl. [read more]

bag 'em

I won't go quite as far as does Shackleford; certainly I do not regard the incident as "murder". Nonetheless, Sites' eagerness to get his scoop has already spawned repercussions, and the progaganda mills of the Arab world are just getting started. [read more]

and yes, I did mean questionable

A rather personal addendum to this post. My father, Sergeant First Class Cecilio Antonio Perez, served in Vietnam during the same time as Lt. Kerry's curiously truncated Swift Boat tour. My father's tour of duty was also cut short—but for... [read more]

don't tread on me

The image above comes courtesy Gerard Van der Leun, who notes that there may be more to this month's naval “exercises” than meets the eye. As a seafaring friend of mine once remarked, an aircraft carrier is not really... [read more]