Why Europe Likes the Iraq Study Group Report More than the White House

Tomorrow at 12:15 p.m., I will chair a meeting that is open to the public with the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Handelsblatt, Germany’s largest business daily.
Tomorrow at 12:15 p.m., I will chair a meeting that is open to the public with the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Handelsblatt, Germany’s largest business daily.
I helped organize a forum this morning for the distribution of a report Terrorism: A Brief for Americans by businessman Richard Vague at an early morning meeting in the Senate. Despite the ridiculousness of sending out the invite the evening before, we got a respectable audience there by 9 am.
(op-ad that appeared in the New York Times before the invasion of Iraq; sponsored by the Florence Fund and TomPaine.com) Richard Vague is one of the country’s powerhouse CEOs.
TWN has secured testimony being offered by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski tomorrow morning in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at 9:30 a.m. Brzezinski will be paired with former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft who will testify about their views on the strategic context of America’s actions in Iraq.
I just received an email from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden that tomorrow he is announcing formally his intention to run for President of the United States. Here is candidate Biden’s campaign website.
(Syrian Ambassador to the United States Imad Moustapha) Remember that snappy Eminem song that pushed a kind of edgy vulgarity that seemed, still, like it couldn’t be deleted or ignored, Without Me? These lyrics came to mind this morning when I learned that Syria’s Ambassador to Washington Imad Moustapha was not among those Arab Ambassadors…
I found that this piece in the Economist captures well the fragility of Lebanon’s current political order. I recommend reading it. Here’s a section I found compelling: Such conundrums point up the peculiar make-up and intractability of the opposing forces.
President Bush probably chuckled when Colin Powell left the room after advising the President about the “Pottery Barn Rule” — “you break it, you own it.” (yes, I know Pottery Barn doesn’t make you pay. . .but you get the point. . .
Ari Fleischer was told “days earlier” than anyone previously knew by Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby that Valerie Plame was not only Joe Wilson’s wife but that she worked in the CIA’s counter-proliferation division. Fleisher also indicated that Libby said this info was on “the QT.
Former Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) has settled in at his new fellowship perch at Brown University’s Watson Institute — and is speaking out in the press about America’s foreign policy mess nearly as much as former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.