Derek Scruggs

I remember reading this funny Point/Counterpoint in the Onion right before the Iraq War. The funny part is not the paragraph below, which is the setup for the joke. However, it’s amazing how accurate this joke turned out to be.

This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred […]

Ted Stevens, Republican Senator from Alaska who was previously most well known for the “bridge to nowhere”, enlightens supporters of Net Neutrality on how those Internet thingies really work:

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to […]

I haven’t followed the whole Dubai port thing enough to have an opinion, but it’s striking that some Republicans see this as part of a pattern of abuse from the White House.
“This was a sound business decision,” said a senior Republican operative of the Dubai deal, “and an absolutely inept political decision. But this is […]

…so of course it must be the fault of the Jews. I can understand (but not agree with) the American flag, but why drag Israel into this? Sigh…

The Samarra Shrine, before and after. Imagine a similar attack on, say, Notre Dame or St. Peter’s Basilica

Update: TIME has a good photo essay here.

I’ve heard several informed reporters comment that a low-level civil war has been under way in Iraq for quite sometime. Today’s apocalyptic attack by Sunnis against Shiites looks like Iraq’s version of the attack on Ft. Sumter, though bloodier.
Even Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, long a voice of restraint in the face of violence against his […]

I just came across this site courtesy of Brad Feld: Save Google Free China
Let me state at the outset that I am disappointed that Google is censoring results in China. However, I don’t believe they have a choice. If you set up shop in a foreign country, you have to follow their laws. […]

A former CIA officer joins the chorus of former officials claiming the Bush administration “cherry picked” intelligence.
What is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of the most important U.S. policy […]

It’s easy:

Now, in order to be considered a “liberal,” only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a “liberal,” regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by […]

Sometimes I have to remind myself that there is a war going on. It’s easy for me, a high-tech yuppie living in a beautiful place with a view of the mountains out my office window - and no close friends in the military - to just see the war as a series of duelling straw-man […]