The political demise and fall of Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is the best news from Japan I have seen in some time.

. . .is now very much in the past tense for two US soldiers, now dead, who helped pen an important August 19th New York Times op-ed, “The War As We Saw It,” authored by seven soldiers in Iraq. FireDogLake has more. Petraeus called these soldiers the new “Greatest Generation.

I’m working on an article about whether or not we will bomb Iran right now — and am trying to sort through a mesmerizing talk that Peter Bergen gave about a resurgent al Qaeda organization. I’ll be back later when finished with the op-ed.

I know I’m a week late in seeing it, did this attack on Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei come out of nowhere or what? The Washington Post doesn’t always get it right, but it’s never gotten it quite this wrong.

(painting of President Dwight Eisenhower by Mike Hagel; hanging in Senator Chuck Hagel’s private Senate office) Before he departs the Senate 16 months from now, Senator Chuck Hagel will have many opportunities to focus a national spotlight on the gaps in the foreign policy and national security course the country is on.

Chuck Hagel is standing down, something this blog highlighted a few days ago. I think that as things look at the moment, the next president is likely to be a Democrat — but the country still will be deeply divided.

Iowans have the privilege and responsibility of field testing presidential candidates and in return, they command an attention in our national policy debates that at times allows them to squeeze out a few goodies, such as ethanol subsidies, despite their inefficiencies.

(Civil rights attorney Leonard Weinglass) All I’d need to write here is Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib or Haditha to make the case that America has lost its moral credibility in much of the world. It’s tough to make a case against other thugs in the world when we deploy unaccountable thuggery of our own.

Senator John Ensign just proposed a major cut to U.S. contributions to UN peacekeeping on the Senate floor. Just last month, with strong U.S. support, the UN Security Council authorized a peacekeeping mission to Darfur. It’s the largest, most expensive mission ever, and it’s coming together now in a very promising way.

J.J. Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Forward, says I misinterpreted the editorial he wrote on Israel, the American Jewish community, and the Armenian genocide in my post last week. The writers and editors at The Forward are a very bright and thoughtful bunch, and I value their contributions to the public debate highly.