Informed Speculation

This excerpt requires no commentary from me:
It has been the nightmare scenario ever since the modern system of congressional oversight of intelligence was created in the late 1970s: When a scandal erupts, a member of congress will put his (or her) political interests above those of the intelligence agency whose secrets he (or she) has [...]

…is the fact that most Bush administration policies on the War on Terror have been continued by the Obama administration.  Now, in and of itself, that doesn’t prove the policies are right, but it puts vehement critics of Bush who were in rapture at the thought of the coming of Obama in a bit of [...]

I know it’s not at all fashionable to praise George W. Bush, but as I watched his farewell address to the nation tonight, I saw vintage Bush…the faults (the halting delivery, the mangled words), yes, but also the worldview that endears him to me even as it infuriates so many (including some of you).  For [...]

It’s understandable that the whiff of panic is in the air, and people have lost faith in the current team and are grasping at any lifeline…no, I’m not talking about Texas Tech fans (what a difference a day makes – 24 hours ago, we were #2, with a National Title nearly in our grasp – [...]

Christopher Hitchens proudly wears the label ‘contrarian’, meaning that he grows quite uncomfortable when the crowd is all leaning towards one side of the ship…and the afterglow of Obama’s victory, though he supported the candidate, is making him a bit quesy:
[I]f you think our own press and media are too uncritically adoring, just spend a [...]

…well, we’ll keep our eye on the hurricane and pray for all Gulf Coast residents, not just the residents of New Orleans.  It would appear from this vantage point that we are engaging in a bit of post-Katrina overreaction, but better to overreact than to underreact, that’s for damn sure.  What we know as of [...]

Gallup daily tracking: dead even.
The latest update includes two days of interviewing following Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate, and neither day showed an improved performance for Obama. Thus, Obama does not appear to have gotten the same type of immediate “vice presidential bounce” as have presidential candidates in [...]

Good piece from David Sanger in this morning’s NY Times on the events that led up to the changed NIE on Iran’s nuclear ambitions:
American intelligence agencies reversed their view about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program after they obtained notes last summer from the deliberations of Iranian military officials involved in the weapons development [...]

A number of new articles have shed light on Israel’s air raid on Syria on September 6th, and it is becoming more and more probable that it was related to nuclear trade between Syria and North Korea:
Israel’s decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with [...]

…and good riddance, I might say. A flurry of second-term departures have come too late for my taste: Rumsfeld, Rove, and now Gonzales. In truth, Cheney should have joined them, and it should have been a coordinated changing of the guards prior to the 2006 election when it might have made a difference.
Why? [...]

…who subscribe to the ‘bad news comes in threes’ theory, here’s something to chew on: three quite accomplished people in vastly different fields, dead within 24 hours of each other: Tom Snyder, Bill Walsh, and Ingmar Bergman…
I sincerely hope and pray that bad news does not come in fours, in this case, as we also [...]

With the commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence, and now the dismissal of the Plame lawsuit against the Bush administration, surely even the most diehard conspiracy theorist can see that this thing is now officially over:
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by outed spy Valerie Plame and her husband against Vice President Dick Cheney [...]

It’s official: Scooter Libby will not go to prison.
President Bush today commuted the prison sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, sparing him the 30-month term to which he was sentenced last month for lying to federal investigators about his role in the White House leak of a CIA [...]

He’s back, unfortunately:
Moqtada al-Sadr is back. After months away from the public eye, the young firebrand participated in Friday prayers at a mosque in Kufa, Iraq.
“No, no to the unjust! No, no to America! No, no to colonialism! No, no to Israel! No, no to Satan,” he said, according to AFP.
Sadr renewed his demand [...]

Sigh…it’s a good thing there’s not real work to be done in Congress:
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the most liberal of the Democratic presidential candidates in the primary field, declared in a letter sent to his Democratic House colleagues this morning that he plans to file articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.
Kucinich has made [...]

What is it with the Democrats and their constantly shifting positions on foreign affairs?
Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush’s authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.
Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members [...]

…(though any fool could have seen it), the proposed move of Halliburton’s headquarters to Dubai is not going over very well with the left:
U.S. oil services firm Halliburton Co. is moving its headquarters and chief executive to Dubai in a move that immediately sparked criticism from some U.S. politicians.
Texas-based Halliburton, which was led by Vice [...]

From Michael Kinsley:
We now know that several people in the Administration told several journalists that Valerie Plame Wilson was CIA. We also know that most of these conversations were part of a concerted effort by the Vice President’s office to spin the Iraq war. If not illegal, this certainly was not attractive. And, as everyone [...]

What in the hell was Jim Hoagland thinking?
Is the vice president losing his influence, or perhaps his mind? That question, even if it is phrased more delicately, is creeping through foreign ministries and presidential offices abroad and has become a factor in the Bush administration’s relations with the world.
“What has happened to Dick Cheney?” That [...]

President Bush is wisely keeping his cards close to his vest right now regarding any possible Libby pardon:
President Bush said yesterday that he is “pretty much going to stay out of” the case of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby until the legal process has run its course, deflecting pressure from supporters of the former White House [...]