Category Archives: War

At breakfast this morning I was looking through an old Doonesbury book while waiting for the papers to arrive. The year was 1979: the Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan, and Phred, the Vietnamese delegate to the UN, was talking to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I don’t often like web sites that are flashy in any sense of th e word; and this one has music on it, which would normally put it completely beyond the pale. But it is actually a stunning piece of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Another day, another atrocity. Interesting that Le Monde says flatly that 22 people are dead, whereas the BBC fractionates them: 15 Italians, 8 Iraqis. And at once there are calls for the Italian troops to go home. There is one … Continue reading → Continue reading →

One difference between PR and news is that in PR you try to put the big lie at the beginning o fthe piece, and in news, you put it at the end. A very fine example of this technique came … Continue reading → Continue reading →

About a year ago, I wrote here that the war planners could not really believe that Saddam had weapons capable of destroying Tel Aviv, because, if he did, the risk of his using them far outweighed any possible benefits from … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I know I shouldn’t be writing about the war so much, but it’s less disgusting than the gay bishop story. And one really puzzling thing did happen this week: on Thuersday and Friday, there were numerous reports that a large … Continue reading → Continue reading →

If our armies are defeated, it must be the fault of the Bolsheviks, the Jews, the French … Tom Friedman of the NYT has been the most useful liberal idiot for the Bush Administration all through this war. He is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I rather liked this quote from Kevin Drum’ s interview with Paul Krugman, the sane economist:Train wreck is a way overused metaphor, but we’re headed for some kind of collision, and there are three things that can happen. Just by … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This just in from the home of the brave and the land of the free:Under the new program, the airline will send information about everyone who books a flight to the TSA, including full name, home address, home telephone number, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

There’s been a huge amount happened to me while I’ve been away, some of it very good; I have caught and eaten the world’s most expensive trout (another story); finished the Selma Lagerlöf translation, and read a great many other … Continue reading → Continue reading →