If you were under the impression that the Gulf War air campaign was all precision strikes, the Amiriyah bombing should disabuse you of that notion. Amiriyah was an air-raid shelter in Baghdad that the US military concluded was some kind of command-and-control center because of all the people (terrified civilians, as it turned out) who … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: the Amiriyah shelter bombing (1991)

I am working without wi-fi, so this is going to be shorter than I'd like. But there's major news about the civil war, and it's good bad just okay puppies completely incomprehensible: MUNICH — The United States, Russia and other powers agreed to a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria’s civil war, to take place within the next week, and … Continue reading Ceasing…something, in Syria

Since I'm on semi-break, and continuing the tradition of sending you to Michael Collins Dunn's blog when there's not much going on around here, this would be a good time to catch you up on his most recent World War I series, on the Senussi Campaign, which began in late 1915. After Italy jumped into … Continue reading World War I reading: the Senussi Campaign

At least it's a classic episode: The Obama administration is "on the verge of taking action" against the Islamic State in Libya, where the terrorist network has flourished in recent months, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told POLITICO on Tuesday. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) declined to describe what kind of action the … Continue reading The Obama administration is in reruns

Republican presidential candidate (and modern-day hybrid of Walt Whitman and Martin Luther King) Marco Rubio, was last seen desperately working to dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing (SPOILER: he knows exactly what he’s doing). Today, Rubio was the subject of a piece by Buzzfeed's McKay … Continue reading The right temperament for the job

The Southern Front has been the one major component of the Free Syrian Army that's managed to hold together as a capable fighting force despite the challenges posed by ISIS, extremist rebel forces, and the Assad regime. Last summer analysts were touting it as Syria's "last best hope" for a non-Assad, non-extremist outcome to the … Continue reading Problems in Syria, north and south

ThinkProgress's Beenish Ahmed has the story of two American citizens who have been most likely railroaded by the Kuwaiti justice system (such as it is) because they happen to be a lesbian couple: A U.S. army veteran and her partner have been sentenced to more than 20 years in a Kuwaiti prison for trumped up … Continue reading BREAKING: AMERICAN CITIZENS UNJUSTLY IMPRISONED BY MIDDLE EASTERN DICTATORSHIP AND oh, my bad, never mind

I need your help to keep this blog going! Please read this and consider contributing something. Also, while you’re out there on the internet tubes, please consider liking this blog’s Facebook page and following me on Twitter! And please share my work with your friends/followers to help me grow the audience around here! Thank you! Friends, … Continue reading Does not compute

I need your help to keep this blog going! Please read this and consider contributing something. Also, while you’re out there on the internet tubes, please consider liking this blog’s Facebook page and following me on Twitter! And please share my work with your friends/followers to help me grow the audience around here! Thank you! The … Continue reading Just some friendly death and coffin banter among friends

I need your help to keep this blog going! Please read this and consider contributing something. Also, while you’re out there on the internet tubes, please consider liking this blog’s Facebook page and following me on Twitter! And please share my work with your friends/followers to help me grow the audience around here! Thank you! I … Continue reading That must have been a hell of a funeral