Liberal Talk Radio

I really thought that some crazy-ass multi-nation diplomatic grand bargain was underway this week. Newsweek says, not so much.
Who knows… these things are all done sub rosa, and we the public aren’t usually privy to the subtle machinations of international diplomacy (or otherwise unable to separate causes and effects of various geopolitical maneuvers). [...]

As Bruno noted, my own pet theory on the Litvinenko killling is that whoever did it wanted to be discovered, in order to send a message to some other rival.
Looks like that may actually be the case:
Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian billionaire and fierce opponent of the Kremlin, confirmed today that police found radioactive traces [...]

…what it is, ain’t anywhere close to clear:
Vice President Cheney will fly to Saudi Arabia tomorrow and hold talks with King Abdullah on Saturday amid a flurry of diplomatic activity over Iraq that reflects the wider scramble to shape the war-torn country’s future at a critical juncture.
The White House said Cheney will discuss regional issues [...]

Watching CNN this morning, and they’re running Tony Blair’s call to bring Syria and Iran to the table to help stabilize Iraq. Now they’ve got the Syrian Ambassador talking about how willing he is to help and how sad he was that the neocons have sidelined him and his country in Iraq for the [...]

While America gets its collective knickers in a twist over what our favorite wooden carving of a man said or did not say (or meant to say), we forget (yet again) that, compared to Vietnam — and even Bush Family & Co. v Iraq Pt. I — even the most informed of us have terribly [...]

As a respectable journal of political thought, this blog is probably no place for the wild, unsubstantiated vitriol I’m about to spit in the general direction of our Piss-Poor Tin-Pot Despot, aka President of the United States George W. Bush.  But it’s Friday, I’m slightly hung over, and my recent posts have all been far [...]

Marty Peretz’s favorite place for wild, unsubstantiated geopolitical intrigue has an ominous (and anonymous!) tip from earlier this week. Happy Friday, Everybody:
The extraordinary buildup of European naval and military strength in and around Lebanon’s shores is way out of proportion for the task the European contingents of expanded UNIFIL have undertaken: to create a buffer [...]

Bruno’s suspicion of the Tehran’s role (direct vs. indirect) in Hezbollah’s initial attack on Israel last month is as good a reason as any to revisit my post from last week, in which I flew off the handle on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and fell into the classic neoconservative trap: letting my testosterone get the better of [...]

I’ll concede that Kevin Drum’s opinion isn’t nearly enough evidence to prove that Iran wasn’t directly involved in the current Israel-Lebanon war, but it sure looks like U.S. intelligence is coming to the same conclusion:
Officials also say that available intelligence does not offer proof that Iran inspired or directed the Hezbollah kidnappings and rocket launchings [...]

Wondering WTF the Israelis are thinking with this apparently over the top campaign in Lebanon? Some thoughts occurred to me, in the form of the several run-on sentences below:
Assuming that I understand the recent situation correctly, UN Security Council Resolution 1559 called for the Syrian military to leave Lebanon, and for all armed militias in [...]