News Brief, My Schedule Is Not Friendly To These Briefs Edition
Posted by Joshua Foust on 02 Nov 2007 at 2:26 am | Tagged as: Notes on the war, Military Matters, Foreign affairs, Domestic Politics
Cross-posted at the right-wing, garden variety, war mongering Conjecturer.
Defense & the War
- Fascinating post on AQI borrowing from us and beginning its own COIN operations in Baghdad.
- William Lind on buying too much into the Navy’s desire to keep on fighting the Cold War.
- Meanwhile, cost overruns on the pathetically overdesigned LCS have forced another to be withdrawn, this time from General Dynamics. Previously, Lockheed Martin’s cost overruns forced the company to complete its vessel at no additional cost to the Navy, a loss pushing into the tens of millions of dollars. At least the Navy is fighting back against ridiculous cost-plus contracts that are basically an excuse for large contractors to print money.
- It’s not just the Navy suffering from a strategic hang over. The American Prospect hosted a fascinating roundtable focusing on just how much we really need an Air Force, especially one that now thinks its future is in “cyberwarfare,” whatever that means this week.
- You gotta love Donald Rumsfeld urging his staff to exaggerate threats and intentionally bait us into war with Iran, dontcha? Bruce Schneier has a related post on how we react to and exaggerate novelty in a terror-obsessed society. I’m not sure how much I like the societal implications of “Rumsfeld as a symptom,” though…
Around the World
- Read Registan.net! Nathan talks about the first real international Kazakh movie epic (which has, unfortunately, mostly American D-List actors). I talk about the terrible consequences of the death of Mullah Naqib in Kandahar last month, and how the Taliban’s return to Arghandab is a result. I also follow through on my promise to puff out the list of murdered journalists in Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. I’ve found 36 so far, and I’m seemingly finding more everyday. It is very depressing, but I think (I hope) it can serve an ultimately positive purpose.
- India’s Naxalite (read: Maoist) insurgency goes open source.
- Russia has booted the OSCE from its role as election monitor in the upcoming Duma election. Vladimir Putin is expected to run, with the intention of becoming Prime Minister, a post without term limits. The Prime Minister is first in line of succession. It is doubly interesting to note considering the large number of people seemingly joyous at the thought of rewriting the constitution to keep Putin in power, and the number of workers ordered to attend Pro-Putin rallies.
- It’s Ann Penketh, so take it with a grain of salt, but it is interesting that Rakhat Aliyev has accused Uncle Nazzy of ordering the murder of opposition politician Altynbek Sarsenbayev last year. It’s like his ultimate trump card.
- Christine Quirk throws some much-needed water on the Azerbaijan “terror plot.” Ian sees reporting that is just as sloppy as that over the fake “IMU plot” in Germany.
Back at Home
- Mike Boyer thinks Ron Paul’s 15 minutes are done, and we should get down to the “serious” candidates. The problem with this analysis is that he pretends any of the other candidates are any more realistic in the meaningless crap they spew, and that Paul has the virtue of a consistent philosophy grounded in something that isn’t naked power lust. I don’t like a lot of Paul’s ideas—his ideas on financial policy (not to be confused with budgetary policy) are particularly dim-witted… but such things are also the least likely to ever get through Congress.
4 Responses to “News Brief, My Schedule Is Not Friendly To These Briefs Edition”
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And you know this because Robin Wright of The Washington Post tells you so? Tsk, tsk.
Wait, so you don’t know whether or not the story is true, you just assume it isn’t because the Post published it and isn’t posting the entire memos on their website like a blog?
I don’t get it—how does that address its validity?
The validity question mostly comes from a long line of Robin Wright (and WaPo) stories that are not terribly accurate, specifically when characterizing the content of reports, emails, or other writings. More recently, Wright opined that reporting good news from Iraq was probably not such a good idea.
You’re right that I don’t know if she’s characterizing them correctly, but I’ve learned to not take the stories at face value, especially when we’re only offered small bits of quoted material — one and two word snippets — and no context. Just for example, she could have presented the full text of at least one of the memos she was characterizing (and to be fair, she may have attempted to do so, but an editor axed that portion of her story).
Wright characterizes the meaning and context of these memos, highlighted by seemingly damning quotes, and all I have to go on as to whether the characterization of them is accurate or not is her reputation and that of the WaPo. While I do think that of the MSM sources the WaPo is by far the best at delivering the straight news, I’ve read it long enough to know to be skeptical.
Good find there Josh. Definitely something to keep an eye on. But I have to wonder what the underlying goal is? So far their actions:
Don’t sound like such a bad thing. I don’t think they can continue to do this kind of stuff and continue to be al qaeda, or conversely, they can’t be al qaeda and continue to be nice like this.