My friend Paul, the Official Middle East Correspondant of Uncertain Principles, has been doing another rotation in Baghdad, and has sent an update on the “surge.” This latest dispatch describes some… reliability issues with the Iraqui police forces who are supposed to be stepping up to provide internal security. There’s a certain Monty Python element […]
Category: War
Memorial Day
It’s Memorial Day in the US, which is the official public tribute to the dead of our various wars. This is marked with parades, and ceremonies at cemetaries in towns all across the country. When I was a kid, we always went to the parade in town, which went from the center of town out […]
Baghdad Update:A Light Crack
As regular readers know, my friend Paul is a journalist based in the Middle East, and spent a year working as a reporter in Baghdad. He finished that a little while ago, but he’s back, and has sent another of his intermittent dispatches. I’ve been posting these to the blog when I get them. This […]
Matters of Democracy
As mentioned previously, there was a talk on campus last night by a couple of activists, Michael Berg and Joan Mandle. Berg is an anti-war activist, best known as the father of Nick Berg who was infamously beheaded on video in Iraq. He’s also a former Green Party candidate for Congress in Delaware. Mandle is […]
Questions for Berg/Mandle?
There’s going to be a dinner/ discussion event tomorrow night featuring Michael Berg and Joan Mandle, who I gather are anti-war activists of some standing (I’ll post some of the biographical information from the announcement below the fold). Anybody have any questions they’re dying to ask either of them? If I get any good suggestions, […]
Actual Terrorist Convicted (Story on Page 43)
Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings points out an honest-to-God terrorist conviction that didn’t make a big splash in the news. Guess why: GREENBELT, Maryland – Robert F. Weiler, Jr., age 25, of Forestville, Maryland pleaded guilty today to possessing a pipe bomb (an unregistered destructive device), being a felon in possession of a firearm and attempting […]
Baghdad Update: That’s It For Now
As you know if you’ve been reading these occasional updates, my friend Paul has been working as a reporter in Baghdad for the last year. He’s based in Cairo, but has been spending six weeks at a stretch in Baghdad, with breaks of a week or two at home. His Iraq shift has come to […]
Certain Principles
Matt Yglesias nails it when talking about faux-outrage over people complaining about the execution of Saddam Hussein: Do these guys not understand the concept of principles? The point of the belief that all people are entitled to fair trials before receiving criminal sentences is that all people are entitled to fair trials. The point of […]
A Modest Proposal
Over at Inside Higher Ed, Edward Palm gets all Swiftian: The Department of Defense finds itself desperately short of troops with which to sustain what promises to be a long and increasingly unpopular, inconclusive war in Iraq. The Department of Education finds itself suddenly alarmed by the relatively low percentage of Americans pursuing postsecondary education […]
Baghdad Update: Bad Cops, Good Cops
Here’s the latest of the intermittent updates (I actually skipped one, but I’ll come back to it on a slow day one of these days) from my friend Paul, who’s working as a journalist in Baghdad (and, thankfully, just about done with his tour there). This is one of the most opinionated of the occasional […]