Category: General

There has been a ton of interest among the people I have met in China over the last ten days in the US presidential elections.

Supporters of the surge give many reasons for the dramatic and real reduction of violence in Iraq over the past 16 months. These range from the rise of the Sahwa movement to General Petraeus’s new counterinsurgency strategy to the newfound independence of Nuri al-Maliki’s government, backed by strengthened Iraqi Security Forces.

The monstrous Hotel Rossiya — Europe’s largest hotel with 3,200 rooms — was demolished in 2006. My Muscovite friends tell me that when it was taken down, every building within a half-mile was immediately overrun with cockroaches. Gross. Two years earlier, the Moskva was taken down to make room for a new Four Seasons.

After I moved my stuff out of D.C. last month, I stopped at a small gas station in New Rochelle, NY to fill up my truck before returning it. I didn’t realize that it was all full-serve until the attendant ran out to me.

One of my good friends in Dem foreign policy circles is Rand Beers. He constantly makes sense to me and seems (thus far) immune from some of the insecurities I often see among Dems who are trying to posture on defense and security issues.

Former Senator Jesse Helms may have died today in a mortal sense — but the brand of pugnacious nationalism that he seeded in America’s contemporary politics lives on in his former legal adviser John Bolton, Dick Cheney and others. We will be battling Helms as an ideological force for decades to come.

I’ve had a tough time getting on the internet the last couple of days here in Guilin, China — but eureka! It worked this morning. I’m told that Brian Beutler, who was shot three times in a mugging the other morning, is making good progress.

Apologies to some TWN readers who wanted to meet in Beijing. Unfortunately, I was able to meet one group that was pre-organized by someone but my schedule was extremely packed except early mornings. Now off to Guilin where I’m pretty sure there are no readers — but then Xian, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

Liberal writer, blogger, activist Brian Beutler was shot this morning in my neighborhood near 17th and Euclid Streets NW in Washington, DC. He was shot three times in a botched robbery attempt.

For anyone who has not looked at the Washington Post this morning, they should flip to Karen DeYoung’s piece about a Baghdad Embassy report on progress in Iraq. According to the report, leaked to the Washington Post yesterday, Iraq has satisfactorily met 15 of the 18 benchmarks established by Congress.