Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson
–Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in Washington today for meetings with President Obama. Our colleague Tony Karon writes it will be a tense debate over when and how to strike a deal with the Taliban. Marc Ambinder describes the optics: “two parents who tolerate each other and cannot …
It seems increasingly likely that the Pakistani Taliban were behind Faisal Shahzad’s attempted bombing of Time Square for all that they disavowed him. Which is why Senators Chuck Schumer of New York, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and New Jersey’s Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez sent a letter to the State Department on Tuesday …
Marc Thiessen, the Washington Post’s new pro-torture columnist, has a typically brutish piece today in which he argues that if we only treated our latest Taliban trophy-capture, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the same way we treated Khalid Sheik Mohammed–i.e. waterboarded him in a CIA black site–we might find out who was running the Time …
David Ignatius has a good account of the issues at stake as Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai arrives in Washington this week. I’d probably put a bit more emphasis on the reconciliation issue–to my mind, the big question this week is whether the President will give Karzai approval to begin formal talks with the Taliban. The U.S. military is …
I’m just catching up with some important news out of Iraq: the two exclusively Shi’ite political parties seem destined to form a government, joined by the Kurds, leaving Ayad Allawi’s secular-Sunni coalition–which received the most votes–out in the cold.
This is potentially dangerous in several different ways:
In the final week of the 2004 campaign, President Bush was barnstorming across Florida. During the last of six Sunshine State speeches Karl Rove was joking with a group of reporters about Osama bin Laden’s October surprise and how the videotape had boosted Bush’s poll numbers. Yes, Rove told us, I’ve been keeping bin Laden in my …
It is early days yet in the investigation of the Times Square bombing, but not too early to be impressed by the quick and excellent work done by the FBI, NYPD and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in picking up the prime suspect, Faisal Shahzad, from a flight to Dubai last night. We in the media were quick to jump all over the federal …
One of the big changes in the U.S. military over the course of my career has been the diminution of happy talk and propaganda designed to hoodwink the public about the true situation on the ground in war zones. There are no more 5 o’clock follies–a reference only those of us old enough to remember Vietnam will understand (it refers to …
The deadtree cover this week is TIME’s annual 100 most influential people of the year. Who’d we miss? Who shouldn’t be on this list? Let the debate begin.
Update:
Even better: TIME’s least influential list. Hysterical.
Ahmed Rashid, perhaps the best informed journalist in the world when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan, confirms my belief that Hamid Karzai’s recent maneuverings are part of a reconciliation strategy with the Taliban:
According to U.S. and Afghan officials, Karzai’s first question when he arrives will be whether Washington supports
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JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
–As I noted yesterday, Democrats have Senate Republicans in somewhat of a headlock over financial reform. From the Wall Street Journal:
Nerves appeared to be fraying among Republicans faced with the increasingly unappetizing prospect of opposing new curbs on Wall Street.
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Republican aides
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An excellent primer lies below from TIME’s London bureau chief, Catherine Mayer, of what to expect from Thursday night’s second ever debate of British prime ministerial candidates. The first debate catapulted Nick Clegg into newfound stardom — he’s even overtaken or tied Prime Minister Gordon Brown in some polls — so it’ll be …
Tempted to call this…”On the Ground in Afghanistan.” But when I wasn’t falling down on patrol, I managed to report and write this story, which–without making judgments–says a lot, I think, about the difficulties American troops are facing in this war. I’ll have broader observations, and opinions, about the war in a few days, …
