What next?
 

Right, but since many (most?) of the flights at Balad carry only the crew of the plane (and often a very small crew, as with the cited F-16), a comparison between Balad and an airport based on the number of passengers is nonsense.

There are people who want to stay in Iraq?


Sure, I probably am. But that's not a place to be wrong. And, wouldn't a non-US-occupied Iraq need an air force base? And isn't one thing we're supposed to be doing over there rebuilding stuff we broke?

In any case, does anyone really believe that maintaining an airbase hasn't always been part of the plan? Even if we had been greeted as liberators, the oil revenue had been enough to pay for US costs AND completely rebuild the entire country into a modern Garden of Eden and the Iraqi Republican party won a free and open election with over 90% of the vote and established a pro-Western, pro-Israeli, perfect libertarian government and their shining example lead the rest of the mid-east (and Pakistan) to follow their lead and even OBL saw the light and turned himself in? Of course there would still be a US AFB on Iraqi soil--in that neo-con fantasy, tho, the Iraqis would have insisted on our staying and paid us to stay to thank us for freeing them from tyranny.

What next?
 

The article starts with the airbase thing to try to make concrete -- no pun intended -- the fact that we're going to be there for a long time, the subject of everything after the first paragraph, not least because we don't seem to have any hope of fighting or diplomacizing our way out of the quagmire. I agree that the first paragraph isn't the best way to get at this issue, for a few reasons, but I suspect that the stylistic demands of writing for a periodical like Newsweek drove that decision.

eta: fwiw, I initially copied everything in the article except for that first paragraph, and then decided I might as well include it too.

What next?
 

Fine. And I'll assume that the target audience for that restatement of the profoundly obvious is the typical Newsweek reader. Could you explain how someone who takes the time to subscribe and and read a news magazine could need that explained?

And, if that mess of a first para was necessary for any reason, that explains a great deal of why "journalists" don't point out when something they are told is factually wrong.

What next?
 

given how flawed the first paragraph, what we should be asking is whether Ty even reads the stuff he posts. What would have suggested posting that? Is it like when I would post 10000 words ERISA articles? Dada?

The President gets him some more lawyers.
 

None from Chicago, perhaps explaining his lousy fiscal policy.

The Bronx is up, and the Battery's down.
 

Shouldn't you be at the Yankees/Pirates game with dtb?

What next?
 

Cracked runways are both a short- and long-term problem for an Air Force. That's not the best kind of example he could have used to make his point.

But despite Hank's bitching, it ws an interesting little piece. Newsweek used to be a POS news magazine though.
Is it better now?

S_A_M

Free Speech
 

Free speech can really suck. On the website for Hostel II site, to mimic the movie's premise, you can ask for a girl as young as 15, specify hair color, weight, etc., and then bid auction-style on the right to chain her up naked and torture the hell out of her till her death. http://www.hostel2.com Isn't that lovely?

Democrats for trade (hi Spanky!)
 

• Compared with the immigrant bashing that has dominated Republican presidential debates, Democratic presidential hopefuls have sounded sweetly reasonable. With the exception of the no-hoper Dennis Kucinich, none has pressed protectionist themes. There is no equivalent to the Dick Gephardt of 1988, who won the Iowa caucuses on an anti-trade ticket.
  
  Instead, the Democratic candidates are focusing on helping the economy's losers without restricting trade, which is exactly what they should be doing. John Edwards, the contender who sounded most protectionist in 2004, seems to have turned over a new leaf. He has admitted that trade benefits poor countries and has declared that arguments over labor standards should not be an excuse to obstruct liberalization. Meanwhile, Edwards has proposed a thoughtful health-care reform that would require everyone to buy insurance. He supports market-minded social programs such as an expanded earned-income tax credit and housing vouchers.

Sebastian Mallaby in the WaPo

Fourth Circuit bitchslap
 

• The Bush administration cannot legally detain a U.S. resident it suspects of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent without charging him, a divided federal appeals court ruled Monday.
  
  "To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them 'enemy combatants,' would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution -- and the country," the court panel said.
  
  In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found that the federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident, of his constitutional rights to challenge his accusers in court.
  
  It ruled the government must allow al-Marri to be released from military detention.
  
  He is currently the only U.S. resident held as an enemy combatant within the U.S.
  
  Jose Padilla, another U.S. citizen, was held as an enemy combatant in a Navy brig for 3 1/2 years before he was hastily added to an existing case in Miami in November 2005, a few days before a U.S. Supreme Court deadline for Bush administration briefs on the question of the president's powers to continue holding him in military prison without charge.
  
  Al-Marri has been held in solitary confinement in the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., since June 2003. The Qatar native has been detained since his December 2001 arrest at his home in Peoria, Ill., where he moved with his wife and five children a day before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to study for a master's degree at Bradley University.
  
  Al-Marri's lawyers argued that the Military Commissions Act, passed last fall to establish military trials after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, doesn't repeal the writ of habeas corpus — defendants' traditional right to challenge their detention.

AP

eta: The decision is here:

http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/067427.P.pdf

On pp 71-72, the court says: "[W]e can only conclude that in the case at hand, the President claims power that far exceeds that granted him by the Constitution. . . . The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention. Put simply, the Constitution does not allow the President to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them “enemy combatants.”" Good times.

George Will bitchslaps Fred Thompson
 

George gets down.

• Tulip mania gripped Holland in the 1630s. Prices soared, speculation raged, bulbs promising especially exotic or intense colors became the objects of such frenzied bidding that some changed hands 10 times in a day. Then, suddenly, the spell was broken, the market crashed—prices plummeted in some cases to one one-hundredth of what they had been just days before. And when Reason was restored to her throne, no one could explain what the excitement had been about. Speaking of Fred Thompson ...
  
  ***
  
  Because this campaign started so early, it may be shrewd for Thompson to bide his time until his rivals seem stale, and then stride onstage. But once there, the latecomer should have some distinctive ideas he thinks will elevate the debate. In a recent speech, Thompson expressed a truly distinctive idea about immigration. Referring to the 1986 amnesty measure that Reagan signed into law, he said: "Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people who are suicidal maniacs and want to kill countless innocent men, women and children around the world."
  
  Kids, do not try to deconstruct that thought at home; this is a task for professionals. Thompson seemed to be saying that the suicidal maniacs besetting us are among us—are among the 12 million. And that although the maniacs are here, they want to kill innocents elsewhere ("around the world"), too.
  
  Well, Reagan, too, had his rhetorical pratfalls, and Thompson, a former prosecutor, must know how to sift evidence and formulate arguments. But as Thompson ambles toward running, he is burdened by a reputation for a less-than-strenuous approach to public life, and that opaque thought he voiced about immigration looks suspiciously symptomatic of a mind undisciplined by steady engagement with complexities. If so, a sound you may soon hear from the Thompson campaign may be the soft "pop" of a bursting bubble.

Good times.

Gattigap

Fourth Circuit bitchslap
 

Damn ultra-liberal judicial activist Carter appointees! Don't they know we're at war?

S_A_M

Fourth Circuit bitchslap
 

N.B. -- Judge Motz, who wrote the decision, is a Clinton appointee. Judge Gregory, who joined the decision, originally was a Clinton recess appointment and then was appointed by Bush. Judge Hudson, the district court judge sitting by designation who dissented, was a Bush appointee.

Fourth Circuit bitchslap
 

quick question: we catch M. Atta on Sept. 10. What would you charge him with?

Fourth Circuit bitchslap
 

I imagine on September 10, enough elements of a conspiracy for murder charge would have been met. April 10 may have been a little more problematic.