Internal Monologue

Andrew links to this Slate article that attempts to explain an interesting piece of the Middle East puzzle: why are Syria and Iran so cozy with each other? This is something that every respectable armchair strategist should be able to talk about a little without sounding completely stupid. Here’s a sample: But geopolitics has brought Iran and Syria together despite these many differences. In a strategic partnership that would have made Metternich proud, the two nations banded together against Saddam's Iraq, which both saw as an immediate threat to their security. Israel, too, provided a common foe. Iran's revolutionary ideology saw Israel as anathema; Syria also opposed the Jewish state, especially after its humiliating defeat in the 1967 war, since when it has strived to regain the Golan Heights. The United States is hostile to both regimes, producing further incentive to cooperate. Both countries worry that the chaos in Iraq will creep across their borders, but they're

Another example of the Bush administration leaving Americans in shitty situations: seems we can’t get our citizens out of Lebanon (HT: slacktivist ). Maybe France can bail us out! Here’s SuperFrenchie : Heard tonight on CNN: “ the French rescued me! ” That was an American woman, rescued from Beyrouth on a French ship. On Monday, France rescued 800 French citizens, 400 Europeans and 50 Americans to Cyprus. They will be flown on Tuesday from Cyprus to Paris. 800 military personnel, in addition to 2 war ships, are assisting the operation. By comparison, by Monday night, the American authorities had evacuated a grand total of… 64 American citizens. Not only that, but those Americans cannot take more than one 30-pound bag with them, have to leave their laptops and cameras behind, and have to pay a $300 evacuation fee or sign a promissory note (in other words, they’re getting a loan !) All of that to go to Cyprus , where they will be left to sleep… in the street! Who’s in charge

Well, Bush vetoed his first bill , the one lifting the federal ban on embryonic stem cell research. I guess Nancy Reagan’s pleading was insufficient. Gotta protect those blastulae (that would be thrown away anyway) from all those evil scientists trying to cure Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Kos is all over it . We should hang this around the necks of the Republicans in 2006 and 2008. Or better yet, see if we can override the veto, and then hang it around the Republicans’ necks. P.S.: My wife says Bush is a “stupid mo-fo” for doing this. Update: Slacktivist has a good post on this: This is what President Bush means by a "moral boundary." He believes that these embryos must never be used for research, because morality demands that they be tossed in the trash with yesterday's coffee grounds. Update II: Slacktivist again : Let me repeat this in blunter terms. Here is what President Bush said yesterday in defense of his veto of Rep. Mike Castle's bill allowing federa

According to this ThinkProgress report , Bill Kristol suggests that by use of “targeted military force”, we can empower Iranian moderates to install a more friendly regime (because that worked so well in Iraq, I guess): KRISTOL: It is, but also the Iranian people dislike their regime. I think they would be – the right use of targeted military force — but especially if political pressure before we use military force – could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power. There are even moderates – they are not wonderful people — but people in the government itself who are probably nervous about Ahmadinejad’s recklessness. He’s right that Iranians don’t like their current regime. But nothing will drive Iranians into the arms of the hard-line fanatics who rule over them faster than a US military strike. (Well, OK maybe an Israeli military strike would do the job faster.) (Atrios links to this story, too, and has a similar opinion.)

OK, as if refusing to rule out running as an independent weren’t bad enough, now it seems Lieberman is not ruling out running as a Republican . Is he trying to lose the Democratic primary to Lamont? This is insane. Naturally, Kos has front-paged this , with a link to donate money to the Lamont campaign. I’m going to give a little bit, not because I think multi-millionaire Lamont really needs my money, but because a Democrat can’t contemplate switching parties without some serious negative consequences. This is all happening very quickly, so maybe this is just some kind of misunderstanding. We’re standing by for more info… UPDATE: Lieberman rules it out . Good for him. We jumped the gun on this.

I’m worried about our intelligence services, and/or our ability to interpret and act on what our intelligence services tell us. Let’s list some major things that caught us off-guard in recent history: The collapse of the Soviet Union, Pakistan’s nuclear capability, 9/11 attacks, Saddam’s lack of WMD, the Iraq insurgency (admittedly, everyone but Donald Rumsfeld saw this coming from several Friedmans* away.), and Pakistan’s A. Q. Kahn selling nuclear technology. Against all these big failures, not realizing the extent of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal seems like pretty small potatoes. But when the speculation of Maniak, (my “super secret missile source”) is equaling what I read about Israeli and U.S. Intelligence estimates a day or two later in the New York Times , you gotta wonder just how broken things are. And I thought Israel had good intelligence services. Isn’t Mossad supposed to be all James-Bondy and stuff? Well I don’t know much about intelligence gathering, but from my office ch

Yes, the golden boy of the Christianists, Ralph Reed, failed to get nominated for Lt. Governor of Georgia. If the man Time Magazine called “The Right Hand of God” (I can barely suppress a derisive chuckle—wait a sec, why should I suppress it? Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle) can’t even get himself nominated to be Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, than maybe they’re just not as powerful as all that. Of course, being in bed with Abramoff and in the pay of gambling interests probably didn’t help his standing with the conservative base (only Bill Bennett gets to gamble !). Digby and Atrios both gloat a bit. Digby takes the opportunity to point out Lieberman’s connection to the culture whiners of the Christian Right (though the link to Reed himself seems a bit tenuous). I knew Lieberman was in a snit about violent computer games back in the 90s, but I didn’t know how linked he was to the likes of Sam Brownback (wingnut-Kansas), et al. All the more reason for Connecticut to jettison him.