Of the 2,700 or so posts that I have written since Kiko’s House came kicking and screaming into the blogosphere, I count fewer than 10 on Israel, several of them on the sad decline and death of Ariel Sharon, a man whom I once loathed but came to admire, and only a couple on Israel and its Palestinian neighbors. The chief reason for this is the utter intractability and predictability of the relationship between the two peoples, which has to be the ultimate current events film loop of my lifetime...

There is a not unfamiliar refrain in modern American political and historic discourse: Did Truman lose Korea? Did Kennedy lose Cuba? Did Johnson lose Vietnam? To which can now be added: Did Bush lose Iraq? The question is hardly worth asking because the answer is so obvious. So let’s move on to what really matters: What repercussions will there be from the defeat of the mightiest military in the world at the hands of a bunch of rank amateurs in a disastrous conflict that has drained the U.S....

It is symptomatic of the chaos in Iraq that tasks large and small are seldom completed. But in a pungently symbolic exception to that rule, the two minarets at the revered Golden Dome in Samarra were blown up today in a repeat of the bombing there that ushered in the still-raging civil war. Initial reports stated that insurgents, possibly Al Qaeda elements that had recently moved into the area, planted explosives around the minarets following a firefight with the ineffectual Iraqi National Police...

Contractors hang from bridge in Fallujah One of the more compelling back stories in the Iraq war has been the use of mercenaries, including former Army Special Forces troopers and Navy SEALS, who get paid fat salaries and out-of-this-world bennies to guard prisoners, protect convoys, stand sentry and do security overflights. The cream of this crop work for Blackwater USA, which touts itself as “The most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping and stability...

Lost in the cacophony over when the drawdown of U.S. troops should or will commence is that the U.S. has no intention of altogether leaving Iraq. It always has been a long-term objective of the Bush administration to have permanent bases in Iraq because of their strategic location between Syria and Jordan to the west, Turkey to the north, Saudia Arabia to the south, and the whole megillah — Iran — to the east. Thomas Ricks reports in the WaPo that the U.S., in fact, plans a permanent...

Byron R. Fouty (top) and Alex Jimenez disappeared in the Triangle of Death in Iraq one month ago today. More here.

Hard to muster much sympathy, eh? For the first time in the Paris Hilton saga, I now a have glimmer of understanding about the demons lurking deep within this wackadoodle of a celebrity poodle whom we seem to so loath and adore. I maybe even have some sympathy for her. Maybe. This is because of the news that the Heiress Paris apparently suffers from “extreme” Attention Deficit Disorder and claustrophobia, two anxiety-related disorders that do not forgive her transgressions but may help...

The notion of voting one’s conscience has become a hoary concept for the members of The Greatest Deliberative Body in the World, so a no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would have been a signal opportunity to resurrect the concept — at least for Republican senators who claim to have more going on between their ears than slush fund calculators. It was a given that most Democrats would vote for the non-binding resolution, but Republicans were confronted with a more...

The Bush administration is now Zero-for-June in stinging rebukes over its extralegal efforts to circumvent the American legal system in order to try so-called enemy combatants. The bottom line is that despite its chest thumping, the administration has yet to complete a single trial involving this detritus from the Global War on Terror. The latest rebuke, the third of the month, came today when a divided three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that the Bush White House had overstepped the scope...

Sheik Abdel Sittar Baziya is a key Anbar leader (HERE’S ANOTHER TAKE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE POST BELOW — GOOD NEWS DISGUISED AS BAD) There’s an old saying that if it’s too good to be true then it probably isn’t. So it comes as no surprise that it the so-called Anbar Awakening is a racket where money talks the loudest and when the money runs out so will its adherents. The Anbar Awakening is the name given the U.S. effort to wean Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar Province...

THE LAW IS AN ASS — Charles Dickens As did the O.J. Simpson murders and other high-profile cases before it, the jailing, home detention and reincarceration of Paris Hilton has provided another window into the American legal system, and once again many of its flaws and outright biases have been on display for all the world to see and fulminate over. We need to be perfectly clear about a fact of life before proceeding: The application of the law is, as Mr. Dickens alluded to 160 years ago, an...

With all deference to those of you who call Los Angeles home because you actually want to live there, I must say it is one truly weird place. It is for that reason that while I was shocked, just shocked that the L.A. County sheriff had decided by his very own self – judges and jurisprudence be hanged — to release Paris Hilton from jail after only three days because she had a rash or something, I was not surprised. That is because I learned while covering the O.J. Simpson criminal trial...

Paris Hilton, shown here screwing in solitary confinement at her Hollywood Hills mansion, has been ordered back to court in Los Angeles later today. Consequently, I have decided to cancel my quadruple bypass heart surgery. Or was it an appointment to get the cats flea baths? I don’t remember which, but stay tuned. Meanwhile, TGIF.

Creature of journalistic habit that I am, I’ve long tried to look ahead and not back. It’s usually more interesting than writing about what most everyone else is writing about, and I occasionally stumble upon something that makes me seem positively prescient. (I’m not going to do that here, so you should feel free to skip this post.) Anyhow, I find myself pondering the end of the Bush interregnum a lot these days. It is with some wonder and not a little trepidation that I consider...

Paris Hilton has finally done it to me. She has so outraged my sensibilities that here I am blogging on this sack of celebrity excrement instead of analyzing every jot and tittle of the presidential race. As everyone but those hundreds of tortured souls rotting in Gitmo surely know by now, the hotel heiress was streeted only five days into her 23-day sentence (already reduced from 45 days) in a celebrity lockup for repeatedly driving drunk. The reason: Paris couldn’t sleep and had become...

WITH DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES American Ballet Theatre has presented six different productions of The Sleeping Beauty over the years. While the version that premiered last weekend on the Metropolitan Opera stage at Lincoln Center in New York City is recognizable to anyone familiar with the oft-told fairy tale, it is a radical departure in some respects, which begs the question as to whether it will stand the test of finicky critics and balletomaines who usually like their classics served straight...

Nick was never the same after Vietnam. He would lapse into deep depressions. He let his teeth go, chain smoked cigarettes and pot and drank way too much booze, fought with his wife and would leave home for days at a time after suffering nightmares about the people that he had killed and seen killed. I was one of the very few people who knew about Nick’s Vietnam experience. It was horrific — skippering a Navy river boat that patrolled the Mekong River. You know what I’m talking...

Just asking.

While President Bush was in the Czech Republic today extolling the virtues of democracy and chiding Russian Premier Putin for not living up to the high standards of the United States of America, this appeared in The New York Times: The Bush administration’s attempt to create an alternative justice system for terrorism suspects, in the works for more than five years, has yet to complete a single trial. After an earlier version of the system was rejected by the Supreme Court last year, the...

We have the pharmaceutical industry to thank for an amazing array of drugs that alleviate suffering, help repair damaged bodies and minds and prolong life. I myself popped a Lisinopril and a Plavix, along with an aspirin, this morning, which has been a daily regimen since I suffered a mild stroke several years ago. I also take Methotrexate, which originally was a cancer drug, once a week to minimize the effects of rheumatoid arthritis. These drugs work marvelously, have no side effects of consequence...

A Sunni insurgent group today posted video of the military identification cards of the two U.S. soldiers missing since an ambush in Iraq’s Triangle of Death on May 12. There is no indication in the video that Specialist Alex Jimenez or Private Byron Fouty are still alive. The video is from the Islamic State of Iraq, an insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq. It included a still image of the photo IDs. Above the photos, written in Arabic, was the message, “Bush is the reason for...

It’s not enough to be merely the best at what you do in music. You have to be compared to other great musicians before you can be validated in the eyes of critics and many fans alike. So it is with Robert Randolph, who only five years ago was playing in a band in the House Church of God in West Orange, New Jersey, and today seems to be perpetually on tour while being heralded as the finest non-traditional pedal steel guitar player extant. Which of course begs comparisons with other great...

STILL MISSING: BYRON FOUTY (Top) AND ALEX JIMENEZ Three weeks ago today, the early morning calm at a small U.S. Army outpost in the village of Quarghouli hard by the Euphrates River southwest of Baghdad was shattered by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. A dozen or so insurgents, led by Al Qaeda regulars, overwhelmed the seven soldiers from the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, breaching the concertina wire ringing their two Humvees and setting the...

Last month I took a break from my usual monthly Iraq war casualty roundup nomenclature — Month X of the War By the Numbers — and headlined that post The Month of Lowered Expectations. Well, we’re more or less back to the usual naming convention this time around, although I did briefly consider something glib (if inappropriate) like Gravity Sucks. This headline certainly would be applicable because the laws of nature, let alone the laws of warfare, have not been repealed by George...

The mother of a San Marco soldier places his boots at amakeshift shrine May has been a tough month for the people of San Marcos, Texas. In the past week, they learned that a 22-year old local man had been killed in an ambush in Baghdad. Area National Guardsmen are preparing for a year-long deployment to Iraq. Then on Tuesday, it was learned that the mother and stepfather of Private Byron R. Fouty recently became residents of the community of 35,000 southwest of Austin. Please click here to read...