Jinn of Current Events

In his resignation speech to the Palestinian Legislative Council, Abu Mazen [aka holocaust-denier Abbas] clearly and openly stated that he had been lying to the USA and Israel while prime minister, explaining that he avoided Road Map compliance: Abbas told the PLC on Saturday that, contrary to reports in the American and Israeli press, he had never sought to wrest control of the Palestinian security forces from Yasser Arafat, nor had he agreed with Washington on establishing a unified security apparatus. [via lgf] 

Andrew Sullivan: ... about comparisons between our current heroic attempt to rebuild Iraq and the Marshall Plan. The best source I've found so far is a Rand comparison between the first two post-war years in Germany and the first post-war year in Iraq. Since the Marshall Plan only kicked in in 1948, this isn't a direct comparison. But from 1946 - 1947, the U.S. spent $266 per capita per year in West Germany (in 2001 dollars). If you assume we will spend the full $20 billion in the next year in Iraq and that Iraq's population is around 24 million, then our current commitment is something over $800 per capita. 

Even NYT columnist Thomas Friedman now understands that France sees itself as an enemy of the USA: It's time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy. If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq's transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.