I can’t help it sometimes. I feel like a moth drawn toward a flame. When Michael Moore pens a heartfelt letter to the President of the United States imploring him to save the world, I simply have to read it. And I confess… I did. I read every last morsel. And here’s the surprising part… Mr. Moore has actually highlighted (albeit in a completely unintentional way, I’m sure) a very...

I find myself in the unusual position of cheering the Supreme Court for suppressing release of more photographs of American abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The high court today instructed the lower court to re-examine the issue. My common sense is that we have seen enough of the photos and to show more would only aggravate the ill feeling and revulsion of a sad chapter scripted under the auspices...

Pre-game coverage of the President’s speech at West Point tomorrow night is on track as White House spinners emphasize that he will “give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down.” Translated, this means that a 48-year-old man named Barack Obama will tell Americans how and why he is sending some 30,000 men and women, most of them younger than he...

In my “Afghanistan: The ‘Dithering’ Ends. The Soldiering Begins,” on president Obama’s Afghanistan address to the nation tomorrow night, I said, “President Obama’s deliberations and decisions, however, have gone far beyond just numbers.” I mentioned a few highlights on strategy, goals, benchmarks, “exit ramps,” etc., and on the additional efforts and participation...

It’s one of the most perplexing paradoxes of the human condition: Why do people formed to worship a perfect, loving, omniscient, omnipresent god continue to murder one another in that very god’s name, millenia after millenia? Shaming his mostly Muslim and Christian readers with a global exposition of this madness, Nagib Aoun of Lebanon’s L’Orient Le Jour points out the real casualty...

Monte Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction unlimited. All rights reserved.

Much to the consternation of Brazilian Jews and many of Brazil’s Western allies, Brazilian President Lula has been hosting the much-reviled Iranian President Ahmadinejad according to the theory that he’ll be able to get his holocaust-denying counterpart to change his nation’s nuclear course. According to this article by Sergio Malbergier of Brazil’s Folha newspaper, “Lula’s...

Thomas Friedman serves up his usual stupid and uninformed homily today, on why Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood — he fell victim to “The Narrative“:

Tuesday night, after months of careful deliberation—some have called it “dithering,” Gen. McChrystal recently called it a “thoughtful process”— President Obama will, before an audience of resplendent cadets at storied West Point, announce to the nation how many additional American troops will be sent to fight in Afghanistan. It is expected that the President will call for...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has a message for Pakistan: you’ve taken some measures against Al Qaeda but you need to get tougher on it and Osama bin Laden: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on Pakistan to take tougher action against al Qaeda and step up its efforts to track down the group’s leader Osama bin Laden. Brown said the efforts of British and coalition forces in Afghanistan...

A Senate report says the Bush administration could have captured terrorist Osama bin Laden in December 2001 — three months after 911 — but that poor judgment calls by then defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-top military commander Gen. Tommy Franks allowed him to get away. The New York Daily News gives a good summary of the report, which comes right as President Barack Obama is about to announce...

On behalf of all of the people of WORLDMEETS.US, I want to wish everyone who works on or visits the Moderate Voice a very Happy Thanksgiving. It’s a venue that would have to be invented if it didn’t already exist. But Thanksgiving or no, world news rolls relentlessly on. Somewhat overshadowed by other major news stories, the trouble between Venezuela and Colombia, exacerbated by the impending opening...

The black jail is a secret detention and interrogation facility at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. The loophole is that the jail is run by U.S. Special Operations, not by the C.I.A. That means it was not included in Barack Obama’s executive order to shut down black sites, which he issued shortly after he took office. And both the Washington Post and the New York Times have articles out today about...

What is as close as we’re going to get to a calling-to-account for the former Decider and his puppet Tony Blair for thousands of deaths in Iraq is unfolding, largely out of American media sight, before a panel of British nobles. The Chilcot inquiry is hearing from such witnesses as the then-Ambassador to the UN that he threatened to quit in the runup to the Iraq invasion over bulldozing from the Bush-Cheney...

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.

New York Is Tough Enough for Terrorist Trials by Michael Winship If you want to royally tick off New Yorkers, try telling us what to do. That’s probably why the police stopped trying to enforce the jaywalking laws here years ago (as opposed to Washington, DC, where I once got one too many tickets and was sent to pedestrian school). And that’s why in the weeks after 9/11, my favorite sign was the...

On the occasion of Veterans Day, I wrote about Medal of Honor recipients in general, but specifically about how one would expect that many of the Medal of Honor recipients would be graduates of our service academies. And indeed, 82 West Point graduates and 74 Annapolis graduates have gone on to earn that high honor. As to the question, “But how about graduates from other colleges and universities?” I said: Many...

That photo of the Vice-President with his arms around a couple of grinning White House gate-crashers will do nicely as a symbol for Americans as they count their blessings, real and imagined, this weekend. While so many were getting their meals at homeless shelters, the headlines are devoted to the reality-show aspirants who breached the most secure location in the nation, decked out in finery and hair-styling...

“Senior Mentors” are high-ranking, retired military officers (usually generals and admirals) who use their skills and experience to advice active duty military in conducting various military exercises, war games and other operations. Some of these senior mentors make as much as $340 an hour as part-time government consultants. In addition to drawing their military pensions, some also work and/or...

Just days before U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to go on television and tell the American public that he plans to send 30,000 to 40,000 more troops into Afghanistan, the war there has led to one less member of the German cabinet: Germany’s Labour Minister Franz Josef Jung has resigned amid allegations of a cover-up relating to a deadly Nato air strike in Afghanistan. Mr Jung was defence minister...

I first got to know Phil Carter as a blogger, rather than an attorney, a Iraq war veteran or the director of the Obama campaign’s outreach to veterans. Until this week, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy. Or as the NY Times put it: Official charged with closing Guantanamo quits. The Times hints that Carter’s departure had to do with the failure meet the Gitmo...

Happy Thanksgiving by Martha Randolph Carr Once again this Thanksgiving I’m asking everyone out there to support our men and women serving in the military with messages from home. The Postal Service has changed the rules since last year so pay attention because letters addressed to ‘Any Service Person’ will no longer be delivered. Go to www.amillionthanks.org for instructions on how to send an email or...

The battle for Kashmir: While it remains one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood conflicts on the planet, it is also one of the most dangerous and unpredictable – and a major threat to the battle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This editorial from Pakistan’s Frontier Post, a newspaper published near the Afghan border in Quetta, shows that while people were all smiles last evening at the White...

Next week Barack Obama will announce he is sending tens of thousands more troops to fight in Afghanistan as he prepares ten days later to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. This juxtaposition raises questions about the “new climate in international politics” for which the Nobel Committee has cited him, observing, “Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote how one Senator, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was obstructing urgently needed legislation intended to help wounded veterans and their families. The New York Times wrote: The omnibus legislation drew unanimous committee approval. But Senator Coburn objected to quick floor passage, demanding that the five-year, $3.7 billion cost be offset with immediate budget cuts. The senator’s argument...