War

The National Intelligence Estimate on the subject, representing the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, is that Iran halted weapons development in 2003, probably couldn’t process enough fuel for a bomb until the middle of the next decade, if it were to resume efforts to make such a weapon.

I don’t want to get ahead of [...]

William Juneau, a 36-year-old Rush City resident with 10 years of law enforcement experience in Minnesota, was killed in Iraq Monday by an improvised explosive device. An international police advisor for DynCorp International, Juneau has been in Iraq since 2006 helping “ train, mentor and advise the Iraqi Police Services.” His convoy was 50 miles [...]

Janine di Giovanni’s stories captivate: A New Jersey-born war correspondent now living in Paris, she’s stared down government guns — quite literally — during a coup attempt in Ivory Coast, walked among towering walls of corpses after a cholera epidemic in Rwanda, spent four days “mopping up blood” after a NATO bombing raid in the [...]

Reese Erlich says yes, by proxy at least.

After reporting trips to Iran, Iraq and Washington, Erlich, who will speak at the University of Minnesota this afternoon (details here) told me in a phone interview yesterday:
“The U.S. is waging a covert war against Iran by encouraging, training and arming ethnic minority militias that carry out military [...]

In case you’ve been busy, here are a few quick stories from the past week.

Minnesota troops and families were fed and linked up across the world.

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No surprise: Former Bush foreign policy advisor pessimistic about Iraq

“There are no good options,” says retired White House foreign policy advisor Tom Maertens. “The military says we can’t stay, we can’t leave, we can’t win.”

The Iraq Study Group Report recommendation that the U.S. begin withdrawing from combat in Iraq is no surprise to Maertens. He [...]

Even in a Star Tribune editorial endorsing opponent Coleen Rowley, John Kline’s military service gets a mention: “He had a distinguished career in the Marines and retains a passion for military and veterans’ issues.” As one of only a few Republican members of Congress who served in the armed forces and has family in the [...]

The next time a congressman tells you he or she is a fiscal conservative, point them in this direction:

Local Costs of the Iraq War