Please note that Pete Abel edited the letter to Republican leaders. He changed the seventh paragraph and published the names of the ones who signed the letter thusfar. At this moment, 14 individuals signed the letter and Pete is waiting to hear more from moderate Republican organizations who agreed to circulate the letter among their members. If you have not signed the letter yet, do so now (this goes for Independents and Republicans). It sends, I think, a healthy message to the Republican leadership:...

One gets the impression more and more that Republicans – and thus the White House – want to replace al-Maliki. Instead of just criticizing al-Maliki, a lobbying firm owned by Republicans is now calling for al-Maliki’s resignation and wants him to be replaced by Iyad Allawi. Meanwhile, Bobby Ghosh explains at TIME that there are few good alternatives after Nouri al-Maliki. About Allawi Ghosh writes: “During his brief tenure, he showed little capacity for administration and...

If you want to read the key finding of the NIE report and Nancy Pelosi’s reaction, I suggest going here.

Joe Gandelman selected a part of this column by Paul Krugman for his Quote of the Day. The quote: Quite simply, America is becoming less white, mainly because of immigration. Hispanic and Asian voters were only 4 percent of the electorate in 1980, but they were 11 percent of voters in 2004 — and that number will keep rising for the foreseeable future. Those numbers are the reason Karl Rove was so eager to reach out to Hispanic voters. But the whites the G.O.P. has counted on to vote their...

Classy: Don’t fool yourselves the Taliban are not barbarians like the US & it’s coalition forces NAY, these Korean Crusaders were tried and sentenced just as the spy Daniel Pearl was. No apology from this Muslim, rather a BIG smile and lots of Duaa (supplications) for my Taliban brothers in Islam. The crime? Trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. The punishment, according to Yousef al-Khattab? Death by beheading. O, he ended his message as follows: P.S. I neither support nor...

I cannot say much about this news, except for that the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, seems to be a bit confused… to say the least. Where he first refused to call the killings of Armenians during World War I ‘genocide,’ he now has changed his mind due to public pressure: In a dramatic reversal, the Anti-Defamation League�s national director has issued a statement describing the massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as “tantamount...

Will America ever get serious about securing the borders of the United States? Donald Douglas says no: The more I read about the down and dirty details of enforcing our immigration laws, the less confident I am that the country will ever get serious about securing our borders and respecting the rule of law. It seems that, ‘when Giuliani was mayor of New York, the city adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on the issue of cooperating with federal authorities investigating...

This was to be expected: Iraq’s prime minister lashed out Wednesday at U.S. criticism, saying no one has the right to impose timetables on his elected government and that his country “can find friends elsewhere.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the U.S. presidential campaign for the recent tough words about his government — from President Bush and from other U.S. politicians. Maliki: “No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected...

Ed Morrissey’s Captain’s Quarters is not just the best conservative blog on the net, it also has a new design. Be sure to go to Captain’s Quarters: it looks great. The design does not just look awesome, though, it also has some great new options / features. Notice how they have integrated Blog Talk Radio into it. Lastly, it also loads faster. Good job Ed.

CNN reports that US President George W. Bush will – Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri, in a speech for Veterans of Foreign Wars – remember the American people of what happened in Vietnam when the US withdrew. Bush will argue that the US should not withdraw from Iraq, because what happened in Vietnam will also happen in Iraq: those who supported the US – and those who did not actively support, but did not resist the US either – will be slaughtered. From the speech: Three decades...

Oops: Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq’s diverse political factions. Where the strategy was first to argue that the military surge would not work,...

Recently, the New York Times had an article up, quoting Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers. Schroeder is a Democratic Liberal who despises conservatives and who seemingly believes that all conservatives are stupid. Her reason for thinking this? Conservatives read less books than liberals. In fact, according to Mrs. Schroeder, this is due to ‘the fact’ that conservatives are not interested in ideas and solutions (let alone complicated matters). No, according...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan I have collected a couple of links to articles about the situation in Turkey / the (likely) election of Gül as Turkey’s next president. As you all will know by now (thanks to Meltem for posting about this topic at my own blog The Gazette), Gül received the most votes in the first round, but not enough votes to become president already. He needs a second (and third) round. Mehmet Ali Birand explains, however, at Turkish Daily News that although Gül did not get...

There is something very interesting happening right now: Senators Levin – Democrat – and Warner – Republican – recently came back from a trip to Iraq and had some things to say about the surge. Certain newspapers and bloggers interpreted their words to mean that they – most notably Levin – believes the surge is working. Other bloggers argue the exact opposite. Since the two sides cannot possibly both be right, the question is who is right? Let’s first take...

According to Jules, Representative Bob Filner (a Democrat) suffers from pre-traumatic stress syndrome: it seems that, on his way to Iraq, the honorable Mr. Filner attacked an United Airlines bag claim employee. Head on over to Jules’ blog – I especially liked the “you can’t stop me” part. Jules shows that this is not exactly the first time that a Democrat misbehaved like that. It seems to me, though, that Republicans are not innocent either. Having said that, “you...

When I received the screener of Cities of Light a documentary about Islamic Spain, it was also mentioned to me that if I wanted to ask questions to one of the producers, I could. After watching it – and writing the review published yesterday – I decided that I could not let this opportunity pass, so I send out an e-mail, got in contact with Michael Wolfe – executive producer of Cities of Light - and we did an interview. Meanwhile, do not forget to watch the documentary about Islamic...

A fascinating article at the Washington Post by Peter Baker: By the time he arrived in Prague in June for a democracy conference, President Bush was frustrated. He had committed his presidency to working toward the goal of “ending tyranny in our world,” yet the march of freedom seemed stalled. Just as aggravating was the sense that his own government was not committed to his vision. As he sat down with opposition leaders from authoritarian societies around the world, he gave voice to...

When I returned from vacation, there were several books waiting for me to read (and review). I published a post listing all of them. Books, however, were not the only thing sent to me: I also received a screener for the documentary Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain, scheduled to debut on PBS on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 9PM. After reading the introduction which accompanied the actual documentary, I could not wait to watch it. It seemed – to put it mildly – like...

The Independent has an article up in which it is claimed that British military commanders have told Prime Minister Gordon Brown that “we’ve done all we can in the south [of Iraq].” According to them, nothing much can be done to improve the situation. It is therefore that they have told Brown that the best thing is to withdraw (prematurely). Where the Army’s aims were – when the war began – “to bring stability and democracy to Iraq and to the Middle East as...

Much has been written about Rudy Giuliani’s foreign policy plan (called “Towards a Realistic Peace”), most of which is negative. Liberals – of course – wasted no time attacking Giuliani’s plan which they consider to be too hawkish and, again of course, neo-conservative. However, not just liberals criticized Giuliani: conservatives like James Joyner were not exactly impressed either. Joyner wrote: It is not particularly realistic — let alone Realist —...