(Photo Credit: Clfhcks’ PhotoStream) Congratulations to Patrick Cockburn, whose award-winning articles for the London Review of Books and The Independent provide an excellent primer on the political situation in Baghdad. Cockburn manages to explain the trajectory of events in Iraq without getting lost in the weeds of the complex and fluid situation there.
I’m still in Doha, and Dennis Ross was here in Qatar yesterday meeting government officials and discussing America’s course on Iran. Now, there are denials from the Iranian press that Dennis Ross and two other senior government officials, including Puneet Talwar of the National Security Council, are planning a journey to Tehran.
Universities, think tanks, defense contractors, insurgent groups and new media operations all seem to be leaning towards Doha. Part of George Patton’s own 3rd Army Division is based near Doha. Al Jazeera is headquartered in Doha.
Jonathan Guyer is a Program Associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force. Although some pundits see the green collar revolution as too good to be true, there are plenty of concrete ways to plant the seeds of a green economy… and Obama isn’t doing that shabby so far.
Of all the evaluations of President Obama’s first one hundred days, I found this analysis by Stratfor CEO George Friedman to be the most compelling.
Joe Klein has written one of the best 100 day nutshell reviews of the Obama administration’s performance I have read. Klein’s take squares almost perfectly with a piece I have coming out in the next few days in World Politics Review — not there yet though.
Joseph Margulies in the Los Angeles Times offers anyone who wants to defend the Bush administration’s embrace of torture a chilling retort. His bottom line: the administration sold out the values Americans cherish most to torture not a kingpin in the al Qaeda network, but a clerk. Margulies writes: First, they beat him.
Patrick Doherty directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative. I encourage everyone to read Julia Sweig’s latest article that is coming out this weekend in the Outlook section of the Washington Post.
Barack Obama’s press conference last night punctuating the ritualistic 100-day review of new presidencies showed this President at his best I think — thoughtful, human, willing to take quite a roster of questions, and well. . .wonky. But Guardian US editor at large Michael Tomasky found a pretty significant error in Obama’s commentary last night….
Patrick Doherty directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative. Speaking before the US House of Representatives’ Comittee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, General Barry McCaffrey, former commander, US Southern Command, called on the US to do three things: 1.
