This is the kind of good news that only illuminates how terrible your problems are. Yeah, it’s cracking that the Iraqi spooks (supposedly) got to hear about a plot for the Final Shootout, but it’s pretty bad news that the speaker of parliament’s bodyguards were behind it. Worse, it looks like a hell of a…
Read More Near-missMost things in this report are terrible, but I’m especially worried by this.. General David Richards, the British general who recently assumed command of Nato forces in Afghanistan, had expressed his reservations about this strategy and was expected to withdraw them when he took over at the end of July. But so far this has…
Read More A bad signAnd you thought we handed over in Maysan voluntarily. You poor fool! Comments Dan thinks that Blair will finally be done in by angry army wives after a disastrous overrun somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s a testament to the strategic incoherence of the trip to Afghanistan that it’s now getting more dangerous at the…
Read More Big HoumousIt seems that, after a week’s bombing to get in the mood, the Israeli army is going back into southern Lebanon. What are they trying to achieve? A question that could have been asked all week, but one that gains force with this escalation. Everyone’s talking about either “clearing a one-mile strip” along the border…
Read More Another dip in the quagmireBlogs covered the news that the Forest Gate raid was down to the unsuppported word of a man with an IQ of 69 quite copiously. But there is more to the problem than just bad sources, Sir Ian Blair and the ACPO grandstanding for their new political role, or whatever. Simply, they have lost the…
Read More The wrong end of the telescopeShorter Times: Everything you know about the Operation Ore child-porn investigation is wrong. In information given to Interpol and in sworn statements submitted to British courts in 2002, Dallas detective Steven Nelson and US postal inspector Michael Mead claimed that everyone who went to Landslide always saw only a front page screen button offering “Click…
Read More Against mass surveillance, againMarginal Revolution says: In Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations, David Warsh notes in passing a bizarrely ironic use of markets by the Soviet KGB. It is 1984: The Cold War is entering its climatic phase. There are war fears at the highest levels of government. In London, KGB agents have been directed to track…
Read More Market, market, market…whoopsRemember all the waffle about Iran supposedly arming the Sunni insurgents (despite it being wildly contrary to Iranian interests)? Well, I think it may be gradually turning into a case of being right too early. Not that the New-Old Iraqi Army is getting arms from Iran, but that somebody may be trying to build up…
Read More Timing is everythingRacial profiling will save us from terrorism. Look at this post from Chirol. All we have to do is lock up everyone who looks like an engineer from Intel, and we’re done. Source: here. Go read, as they say. Interestingly, he was actually an engineer before taking up terrorism. And it’s amusing that the leaderless…
Read More Racial ProfilingApparently, Douglas Feith wanted to bomb targets in South America, or perhaps South-East Asia immediately after the 11th September 2001 raids “because it would surprise the terrorists”. Following the link you can find much snark as to alternative options that would achieve the aim of surprising the terrorists. It seems intuitively bizarre that anyone would…
Read More Surprise, Feith, and the levels of analysis