As the Iraqi insurgency accelerated in 2003, a brilliant staff officer with the Multinational Forces Command in Baghdad compiled a research study of counter-insurgency campaigns in the 20th century.
The officer, Kalev I. Sepp, argued that guerrilla warfare is not an invincible weapon. Indeed, in about half the conflicts he studied, the counter-insurgents prevailed.
Among   more

The House of Representatives is almost certainly lost to the Republicans, and probably the Senate as well.
Over the coming weeks, there will be no shortage of explanations offered as to the causes of the Republican debacle. Some will cite Iraq, others the price of gasoline, still others the Abramoff and Foley scandals. These explanations   more

It’s the oldest trick in PR: If you want to generate publicity, generate a statistic. Statistics get attention. They lodge in people’s minds. They take on the status of facts. And by the time somebody comes along to check your work–well, it’s too late. The stat leads the evening news. The correction? Page A13.
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The North Korean nuclear test–if that indeed is what it was–signals the catastrophic collapse of a dozen years of American policy. Over that period, two of the world’s most dangerous regimes, Pakistan and North Korea, have developed nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch them. Iran, arguably the most dangerous of them all, will surely   more

Guess whose political platform this is:
- Tax cuts? No.
- More public money for government-monopoly health care? Yes.
- Same-sex marriage? Enthusiastically yes.
- Big supermarkets? Offenders against the environment.
- Kyoto Accord. Absolutely.
- Terrorism? Close Guantanamo.
- Illegal immigration? Don’t talk about it.
- Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s rocket attacks? Disproportionate.
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