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[Washingtonmonthly.com] The Washington Monthly: ...the Administration must develop and provide to the Congress a more comprehensive set of performance indicators and measures of stability and security in Iraq than is currently available. As such, the conferees direct the Secretary of Defense (in consultation with other appropriate members of the National Security Council) to provide a report to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Majority Leader of the Senate, and the congressional defense committees that identifies security, economic, and Iraqi security force training performance standards and goals, accompanied by a notional timetable for achieving these goals.(emphasis added), followed by a laundry list of indicators (see pp 97-98).

 [Fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com] The Belmont Club: Stephen Vincent: Vincent's work sharescertain points in common with Michael Tucker (the producer of GunnerPalace, who accompanied his film subjects on patrol for two months) and MichaelYon, who describes himself as "an independent, informed observerchronicling the monumentally important events in the efforts to stabilize Iraq.His dispatches have the benefit of his life experiences without drawbacks basedon deadlines or demands of marketplace." In the strange and recursivenetwork of the Internet, Mr.Yon filed this dispatch on Mr.

[Belgraviadispatch.com] The Belgravia Dispatch: Iraq Archives: While Sunni Arabs are thought to constitute the demographic majority in four governorates (al-Anbar, Nineveh, Salah al-Din and Diyala), the community is probably too divided -- over whether to vote and thereby legitimise the process or stay home and suffer a constitution harmful to their interests -- to be able to mobilise sufficient turn-out. And while other Iraqis opposed to the constitution, such as, potentially, followers of Muqtada Sadr, may come out in large numbers to vote "no", they are largely absent in predominantly Sunni Arab governorates, and along with the Sunni Arabs are unlikely to clear the 50+ per cent threshold needed to defeat the constitution nationwide.

[Obsidianwings.blogs.com] Obsidian Wings: Iraq and Terrorism: However, Juan Cole's Guest Editorial by Keith Watenpaugh, Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern History at Le Moyne College, argues that we've already laid the groundwork for a very American Iraq, essentially having implemented a "concerted plan to turn Iraq into a dependent and docile American client." Writing at length about John Agresto, who was appointed by the CPA as senior advisor to the Ministry of Higher Education, Watenpaugh notes that Agresto is a good example of the "politically loyal agents, rather than those most objectively qualified to assist Iraq" who have been laying the groundwork for the transition. Describing Agresto as someone with "no training in Middle Eastern society or culture and no experience in the region," he adds that he "was one of the leading right-wing figures in the “culture wars” of the 1980s."

Candide's Notebooks: Candide Recommends: Wednesday, August 2, 2006 War Fare Candide's Notebooks Peace Out Peace is to Ehud Olmert what an human appetizer is to Hannibal Lechter. So it’s not a surprise that he thinks politics and bomb tonnage are synonymous: "We are at the beginning of a political process that in the end will bring a ceasefire under entirely

Reflected tags on Technorati: Blog, Iraq, Iraq Reviews