earlier this week in Salon: Today Iraq, tomorrow Iran. Apparently Krauthammer and other pundits who banged the drum for the war in Iraq have now turned their focus to Iran and are actually calling for a preemptive war in the continued absence of a “liberal” revolution there.

everyone must know by now that former “White Knight”, pal of the Pentagon, and friend of neocons everywhere Ahmad Chalabi and his nephew have been charged with forgery (Ahmad) and murder (the nephew, Salem). Glad this is working out so well over there.

while on vacation was the story about the Bush administration’s reversal on an extremely important issue, the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Basically, this is a long-sought treaty that will compel states to no longer produce new fissile material – i.e., material that can be used to make weapons. US policy has always been to support the treaty with a strong verification plan, but last week, the US changed its policy on the nuke pact. As you can see by the chronology on this issue, this is a big reversal of policy. But as I have argued before, this is entirely in line with the mainstream of US foreign policy, which for years (since Reagan and GHW Bush and accellerating through Clinton and GW Bush) has been to commit other states to treaties that do not bind the US.

Two things to note. First, as usual, Bush says that he supports something (FMCT) and acts against it. Second, the ultra-conservative Washington Times gets the story exactly backwards, in what is obviously a willful editorial decision to misinform the paper’s readers.

John Robb’s Global Guerrillas weblog is quickly becoming required reading for those of us interested in the study – not the propaganda – of terrorism and the like.

“Guantanamo Bay is an anomaly that has at some point got to be brought to an end” Blair was quoted from remarks he made to a parliamentary committee today.