According to Newsweek, very few State department officials feel a strong urge to volunteer to work at the American Embassy in Iraq. But soon they won’t have any choice, as 200 to 300 diplomats will be identified as “prime candidates” and shipped over to Baghdad whether they like it or not. Fun!
Nope, it doesn’t involve duct tape or keeping an eye on your neighbours for possible un-American activities. Wired magazine profiles a suburban Montana woman who spends her days at an office, but her nights monitoring jihadi activity online.
With the violence marring the return of exiled Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, it’s increasingly obvious that Pakistan is sinking into the thrall of militants. Newsweek has a very interesting piece on how we should be more scared of civil unrest in Pakistan, which already has nuclear weapons, than in Iraq, which doesn’t.
While Bin Laden occasionally creates videos aimed at a Western audience, his parables of naughty she-goats unearthing knifes don’t have a hell of a lot of cachet in media-soaked North America. But a growing group of jihadi bloggers and other activists already based in the West are spreading Al Queda’s message,and according to the New York Times, are doing so with some measure of success.
With Blackwater already in trouble for shooting Iraqi civilians, more stories are coming to light of arrogance and recklessness regarding the private security firm. The latest involves Blackwater operatives getting into a car crash with U.S. soldiers, then forcing the soldiers to lie down at gunpoint until help arrived. Not that there’s any real legitimate power structure in Iraq, but you’d think U.S. soldiers would be the last word in authority in a war zone, just by dint of hardware and history.
North Korea’s decision to give up its nuclear ambitions is due n no small part to China acting as a go between between the Hermit Kingdom and the United States. And China may be the key to ending the deadlock between Iran and the U.S. The New York Times Week in Review breaks it down.
According to Seymour Hersh, the Bush Administration has gotten it through their heads that the American people aren’t buying the “OMG they has the nukes” argument a second time around, and have shifted their strategy to surgical strikes on Revolutionary Guard facilities in Tehran and elsewhere. I guess that beats tactical nukes being lobbed all over the country, but it’s still going to unleash a torrent of terror throughout the Middle East and elsewhere. Way to go, Cheney!