Unilateralists are getting ready to squirm. The date for the first hearing on the Law of the Sea convention has been set for September 27, when government witnesses will testify. In October, treaty opponents and business representatives (all supporters) will testify in a second hearing.

If you’re in the Southwest United States in the next few days and have some spare time, you’re in for a treat. My colleagues Raj Purohit and Tom Moran are on tour with Michael Otterman. The three are discussing Otterman’s important book, American Torture.

General Wesley Clark, who was the first among potential presidential candidates, to call for direct nation-to-nation talks between Iran and the United States, has just endorsed Hillary Clinton — who came later to that view on Iran than he did.

I’m going to be over at Al Jazeera tonight listening to and then offering reactions on Bush’s speech on Iraq. Bush is going to restate his intention to draw down US force levels in Iraq by 30,000 troops, to pre-surge levels.

My New America Foundation colleague Michael Lind and author of The American Way of Strategy has just penned a thoughtful op-ed that gets right at the nugget of what Senator Lugar was pushing in his opening statement at the Crocker/Petraeus Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings.

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.