Matthew Duss

One To Grow On

Stories like this are why I make it my policy never, ever to go in the water. Ever.

Authorities kept watch Saturday over a stretch of Southern California beaches, scanning the waters for a shark they believe killed a triathlete a day earlier. [...]

Helicopters kept searching for signs of the shark that killed triathlete David Martin, Solana Beach Lifeguard Capt. Craig Miller said.

Martin, 66, died on the beach Friday morning after a shark, presumed to be a great white, lifted him out of the water with his legs in its jaws, leaving deep lacerations and shredding Martin's black wetsuit.

Yes, I know shark attacks are statistically rare. I'm sure that made a hell of a lot of difference to this dude as he was lifted out of the water in the razor-sharp jaws of a 5,000 pound, 17-foot long apex predator.

Strategic Confusion

Brian Katulis and I have an op-ed in today's Baltimore Sun. Here's the money:

In their testimony before Congress this week, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and General David Petraeus portrayed recent clashes between competing Iraqi factions as a fight between the Iraqi government and Iranian-supported groups looking to undermine that government. This simplistic "good guys versus bad guys" depiction masks a much more complicated reality in which U.S. policy in Iraq unwittingly strengthens Iran's overall hand there and around the region. [...]

Over the past five years, Iran has hedged its bets, maintaining ties and offering support to all of the major Shiite factions in Iraq, including Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, which fought pitched battles with the Iraqi army and the Badr Corps last month. But Americans should be clear about where Iran's closest allies are in Iraq. They are at the highest levels of the Iraqi government.

On Basra

Some commentary on what happened in Basra and after.

Abu Aardvark reflects.

Eric Martin on the same clowns always predicting the end of Sadr, at it again.

Spencer Ackerman on how Sadr drew a box around the surge.

Joe Klein on how the Fred and Kimberly Kagan, collectively, don't really know much about Iraq.

My Wonk Room post on how John McCain doesn't really seem to know much, either.

A Hundred Floors Above Me, In The Tower Of Song

Leonard Cohen is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner
Take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I'm your man

If you want a boxer
I will step into the ring for you
And if you want a doctor
I'll examine every inch of you
If you want a driver
Climb inside
Or if you want to take me for a ride
You know you can
I'm your man

Ah, the moon's too bright
The chain's too tight
The beast won't go to sleep
I've been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep
Ah but a man never got a woman back
Not by begging on his knees
Or I'd crawl to you baby
And I'd fall at your feet
And I'd howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I'd claw at your heart
And I'd tear at your sheet
I'd say please, please
I'm your man

And if you've got to sleep
A moment on the road
I will steer for you
And if you want to work the street alone
I'll disappear for you
If you want a father for your child
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I'm your man

Friday Guitar Blogging

Gotta get me one of those fretless guitars.

Five Years of Funk

Congratulations to Sun Tzu Sound on five years.

A Poor Excuse For Statecraft

Michael Ledeen, last Thursday, outraged over the Turkish invasion of Iraq:

I thought we were supposed to be the guarantors of Iraqi sovereign integrity. Yet we mumble into our beer and do nothing when the Turkish army invades Iraq, attacks Kurdish positions and carries out all manner of military operations there. […] The current situation is an invitation to open warfare between groups we should want on our side. It's a poor excuse for statecraft.

Michael Ledeen, in 2002, clamoring for the American invasion of Iraq:

One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.

Smarter, please.

News Item Of The Day

Wow:

Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger escaped an assassination plot hatched by the Hells Angels, a new British Broadcasting Corp. documentary claims.

A program to be broadcast Monday on BBC Radio 4 says the rock star was targeted in 1969 following a purported dispute with the motorcycle gang over concert security.[...]

Gang members hatched a plan to kill Jagger at his holiday home in Long Island, New York, the BBC claims. Their attack by sea was thwarted when a storm hit their boat, throwing the men overboard, the program says.

The Angels probably found the boats extremely hard to steer, weighed down as they were with all those motorcycles.

Little Help

Ahmedinejad in Iraq:

Mr Ahmadinejad's visit has come without the assistance of the United States.

US forces are not involved in security for the visit and did not provide helicopters to transport Mr Ahmadinejad into central Baghdad.

Instead he had to travel by car along the usually dangerous road from the airport to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's residence near the US-controlled Green Zone.

There, he was warmly greeted by Mr Talabani as he walked down a red carpet past an honour guard.

Imagine that: A head of state visiting Iraq without having to sneak in and out. And I have to quibble with the BBC here: Ahmedinajad's visit has come with a lot of assistance from the United States. We spent almost $600 billion to remove Iran's greatest enemy and install the pro-Iranian Shiite government that welcomed Ahmedinajad to Baghdad.

Friday Guitar Blogging

Bill Frisell.