RUDY GIULIANI on Iraq.
Jay Reding liveblogged Bush’s speech.
Archive for 2007
January 10, 2007
THE SURGE has begun.
UPDATE: A report from Baghdad.
Plus, a Milblog report, and background on Sadr here.
To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.
At least, that’s what it sounds like. A bit late, but perhaps not quite too late. That goes for most of the speech (we’re doing something about Iran and Syria? About freaking time.) But why did he wait so long to do these things that lots of people — bloggers, too — have been calling for for years? “Compassionate warmaking?”
More thoughts on Bush’s new strategy here.
MORE: Compassionate warmaking can backfire.
The additional troops are nice, I guess, but I think it’s the shift in tactics — if followed through on — that will really make the difference. As I’ve noted before, the problem has been our inaction with regard to Iran, etc. Sounds like that’s going to change, but we’ll see — Bush’s inaction on Iran has been bothering me for some time.
AUSTIN BAY offers a Bush Iraq speech preview and critique.
MICHAEL YON posts more blogging from Iraq. Lots of cool photos, too, and a bit on Rules of Engagement:
The “White Apartments†in Ramadi are not white, and none of the soldiers seemed to know why they are called the White Apartments. What the soldiers did know is that they get into a lot of shootouts at the White Apartments, that al-Qaeda and local thugs use the place as digs; that they had kidnapped and murdered university students there, and that our people and the ISF were not out to capture these terrorists, but to kill them. And they would say it: we are here to kill the terrorists.
The soldiers said they had just burned up a bunch of cars they knew belonged to troublemakers at the White Apartments. When I mentioned that I knew a commander who was not allowed to burn enemy cars even when he found weapons in them (he burned them anyway, which I never reported because he was winning ten dollars for every two he gambled), the soldiers in Ramadi said they do it all the time. And they said they are winning despite the chaos and continuing losses.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Hmm. Speaking of Rules of Engagement: “Bush’s words will lead to more pointed questions than ever before — especially the part about U.S. troops operating under ‘too many restrictions.’ Why did he allow that?”
Why, indeed? This might be titled “Bush: Bill Quick was right.”
“INSULTING THE HELL out of law professors.”
FOR THE SURGE, before they were against it.
And Don Surber has thoughts on Ted Kennedy.
IT’S A QUAGMIRE: “The troops were supposed to be home by now, but instead, faced with increasing violence, political leaders are planning a surge. Iraq? Nah, New Orleans. . . . They said New Orleans was supposed to be a cakewalk; some neocons even called it ‘the Big Easy.’ They sold us a bill of goods, promising the natives would greet us with beads and celebratory parades. Instead we got murder and mayhem. Cindy Sheehan was right: U.S. out of New Orleans!”
Heh. We should have realized that the local government was irretrievably corrupt and factionalized.
AN I-PHONE KILLER from Samsung?
iPhone criticism here. “You can’t even change the damn battery.”
UPDATE: Heh: “In related news, Microsoft has announced plans for its ‘Phune’, expected to be released in the Spring of 2011.”
REVERSING THE SPIN on Bush and Iraq.
AN OPEN-SOURCE ROBOT CHASSIS from the Roomba folks.
DAVE HARDY’S NEW Second Amendment documentary
AUSTIN BAY, on living in the age of proximity.
THE LAST WORD ON THE “INTIMACY KIT” MENTIONED BELOW comes from a former student of mine, who emails:
BTW, last time I was in New Orleans, there was an Intimacy Kit in the minibar in my room. I found it as amusing as you did. “For all those special moments, when only a moderately chilled condom will do…”
Heh.
A “BUREAUCRATIC WAR” on the Bush Administration?
“ANTI-ALTHOUSIANA?” I think when the haters become a genre, you’ve made it!
GOOD NEWS: “Al-Qaeda terrorist Fazul Abdullah Mohammed – reputed architect of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in east Africa – was reported killed in an American airstrike in Somalia.”
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Howard Kurtz looks at deficit politics:
If Bush believes in keeping federal spending under control, why did he sit back and allow his party to pass one pork-laden, budget-busting bill after another while his veto pen rusted? Even many Republicans grew disenchanted with their party’s belated embrace of big government.
Which brings me to the Democrats.
They ran in ’06 as the party of fiscal sanity, and delivered last week by restoring the pay-as-you-go rules in the House. This means no new spending can be approved without cutting other spending or raising taxes.
The problem is that this will prevent the Dems from delivering on other promises they’ve made on health care and other issues. And the truth is, you get very little public credit for reducing the deficit. It’s an abstraction to most people. Ross Perot helped make it an issue in 1992, but other than in that brief interlude, politicians know it’s easier to win reelection by pointing to new (and costly) initiatives than a reduced flow of red ink.
I’d like to see more outside pressure on this topic, and I think it’s important to test the actions of both Bush and the Congressional Democrats against the promises they’ve made about deficit reduction.
NIFONG UPDATE: Lots more on what’s going on at Duke from K.C. Johnson.
THOUGHTS ON FIGHTING AGING vs. fighting the symptoms of aging.
RALPH KINNEY BENNETT writes on auto shows and the march of technology.
MICKEY KAUS: “Supporters of welfare reform have seen caseloads drop dramatically and a employment rise, but we’re still looking for unmistakable signs of a dramatic improvement in the culture of ghetto poverty, especially for black men.”
THE SANDY BERGER REPORT is out. John Fund emails: “This is the single most disturbing fact in the new Berger report: The House committee report said Berger was never given a polygraph test despite having agreed to it as part of his plea bargain with the Justice Department in 2005.”
January 9, 2007
A RADIO-CONTROLLED ROBOTIC ornithopter.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON COMMENTS on the state of American universities.