November 30, 2002
you gotta be kidding

Henry Kissinger, the head of a commission charged with bringing out the truth about US intelligence and foreign policy?

I'm just agog at this. I'm also disgusted, but not surprised, that the Democrats haven't set Bush on fire over this.

When I first read the report, I thought it had come from the Onion.

Anyway, as usual, others express things better than I:

get your war on

Christopher Hitchens

Posted by dpassage at 10:37 AM
November 26, 2002
balkan mendacity

Blood and Vengeance. By Chuck Sudetic.

I finally finished this on the plane back from an unreasonably short trip to Boston last week. It's a very compelling and personal telling of the war in Bosnia, although I admittedly had trouble following all the various people introduced.

The most amazing thing to me about it was the extent to which the UN military commanders and other Western political leaders were willing to ignore what was happening on the ground. While he doesn't say it outright, I started to think that it had to do with the fact that most of the atrocities were committed by Christians against Muslims, or at least that the Christians had superior military strength.

It also shows how the Cold War covered up regional and ethnic conflicts for so long. As soon as the dictatorship fell, all the old animosities came back, despite fifty years of ethnic peace and intermarriage. Was it the intense oppression of Communist rule on a fractured society, or would this happen anywhere the existing social structure broke down?

Posted by dpassage at 08:10 PM
take off, eh

Damned Canadians.

Posted by dpassage at 07:30 PM