You may have noticed that we’re having a problem with comments: clicking on “comment” doesn’t do anything. I’m not sure what the cause is, but I’m rebuilding the site, which will hopefully fix the problem. In the meantime, you can still read and post comments by clicking on “permalink” and viewing the individual post page….

We will get, in due time, to Steve Walt’s noteworthy appearance at the “Committee for the Republic” — a Washington club comprised largely of dissenters from Bush’s foreign policy.

Granted, more than 90% of communication is supposed to be non-verbal. And images and atmospherics certainly are as important to diplomacy as the spoken and written word.

For those of you who feared that Steve’s absence would mean a whole week without any references to John Bolton, I bring good news.

Just as in foreign policy, economic policy under the Bush Administration has been waiting for adult supervision.

Al Gore’s latest venture in the film business has produced a movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” about the dangers of climate change. This feature film takes the famous Gore lecture on climate change and intersperses the science with biographical moments, those “Aha” moments that have formed the Al Gore we see today.

Try as they might, the Republicans are not going to be able to spin Haditha. But they sure are trying.

Hi. Thank you to Steve Clemons for allowing me to guest blog on The Washington Note. I write about security, and will comment on any such issues that come up in the next week. I’ll also provide links to essays I’ve already written, because the same security topics come up again and again.

The parallel between Richard Nixon’s and George W. Bush’s second mandates has been noted before (failing war, divided society, calls for investigations) but an interesting dimension playing out is how popular culture is echoing the mood from that period. Hollywood, of course, never fails to join the political bandwagon during wartime.

We need a professional constabulary force to sustain stabilization operations in Iraq. The terrible events at Haditha have us all wishing that our forces were doing a better job in relating to the non-combatant majority in Iraq.