Category Archives: Sunni

Not Knowing the Enemy

Iraq War, Shi'a, Sunni

In an eye-opening commentary in yesterday’s New York Times, Jeff Stein (the national security editor at the Congressional Quarterly) clues us into the clueless state of this administration’s national security apparatus. “Can you tell a Sunni from a Shiite?” he asked a number of counterterrorism officials and members of Congress. The responses, often dumbfounded “I dunno” looks, reveal one of the reasons the so-called war on terror is going so badly. “Too many officials in charge of the war on terrorism just don’t care to learn much, if anything, about the enemy we’re fighting. And that’s enough to keep anybody up at night.” Anybody, it seems, but our self-assured Bush League presidency. Continue reading Not Knowing the Enemy →

Addicted to Oil: President Tells it Like it Is

Humor and Satire, Iraq War, Taliban

President Bush delivered a highly scripted and hyperbolically enriched “State of the Union” address last night. The time has long since passed when Presidents actually had the writing skills to prepare their own speeches so in a sense the speech is no more copywritable to George W. Bush than the White House is his White castle. The reaction flooding the airwaves and bloggy-eyed net this morning is, if I may go out on a limb here, partisan as usual. Historians of American history might wince at the opening salvo that “Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger,” but this line probably netted a few amens from executives of Exxon, whose 32 billion dollar profit last year was the most in history. Continue reading Addicted to Oil: President Tells it Like it Is →