December 16, 2005

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The Fine Art of Withdrawal, by William S. Lind: “As the worst case, we should envision what might happen if Israel or the U.S. or both attack Iran. Israel has recently indicated that unless international efforts to secure Iran’s nuclear program succeed, an Israeli military action is likely sometime next year. Iran has said publicly that it will regard an Israeli attack as an attack by America also. If Iran’s influence in Shiite southern Iraq is as great as reports suggest it is, the obvious Iranian response would be to blow up the magazine by attacking the American lines of supply – and withdrawal – that come up from Kuwait. Add a Shiite insurgency to that of the Sunnis, and an American withdrawal could start to look like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, with sand substituting for snow.”

Wow, another hysterical post on the Israel-Iran war that hasn’t happened yet.


The best thing that could happen for the U.S. in the Middle East would be for Iran to attack us in Iraq. That would give us an excuse to take out their entire military infrastructure with JDAMs launched from B-1s.

You’ve got to remember that “one of these things isn’t like the others.” Iran is a well-equipped regional power. The U.S. has huge reserve arsenals of strategic weapons with global reach.

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ArmsControlWonk seems to think so.

My colleague Todd Sechser has a fascinating data set. As the difference in power between two states increases, a weak state is less likely to comply with demands by a strong state. His hypothesis is that the differences in power make it impossible for strong states to credibly offer Schelling’s implicit promise of nondestruction should the weak state comply.

Read more at www.armscontrolwonk.com…


I don’t think so. The whole point of the Iraq war is that if weak states create intentional ambiguity about their willingness to build and use WMD, they can get their drivers’ licenses taken away. Statehood is a privilege, not a right.

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Independent Online Edition > Reviews:

A helpful blurb makes the link between Rice’s more usual heroes - the undead in particular and the elegantly doomed in general - and the Christian saviour. “He is the supreme supernatural hero,” it reads, “the ultimate outsider and the greatest immortal of them all.”

This promises to be theology with a twist - perhaps a not-so-good book. Christ the Lord begins teasingly enough. On the first page, the seven-year-old Jesus strikes dead another boy, a bully. Two pages later, we’re told how Jesus once fashioned clay sparrows - on the Sabbath, no less - then clapped his hands and made them fly away. And at the end of the first chapter, Jesus considerately resurrects his playground rival.

These episodes are not the product of Rice’s imagination; they’re drawn from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

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According to the Mirror,

A PUZZLE that has baffled art lovers for five centuries has been “solved” at last - by computer.Now historians may themselves be glad to know the state of mind behind the Mona Lisa’s smile is happiness. Well, 83 per cent happiness.For the “emotion recognition” software used to decipher the enigmatic expression painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1503 and 1506 also found La Gioconda - the alternative name of the renowned Italian’s work - was experiencing three other feelings.The sitter, most probably the wife of a leading Florence citizen of the day Francesco del Giocondo, was also nine per cent disgusted, six per cent fearful and two per cent angry.

Two percent sounds a little low.

Read more at www.mirror.co.uk/news/t…

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