Robert Farley

This looks to me like a clean victory for Sadr. In the words of the immortal Jim Malone, if you open the door on these people, you have to be prepared to close it; Maliki couldn’t close it, and now he looks pathetic. It’s becoming clear that Maliki or elements within his government asked Sadr […]

Defense News: The U.S. plans to urge Britain to launch a “surge” in Basra to combat increasing violence in the southern Iraqi region, the Sunday Mirror newspaper reported. Britain, which has around 4,100 troops in Iraq, transferred control to Iraqi forces in December last year but could now be asked to step up its role […]

President Nicholas Sarkozy has announced that France will cut its airborne nuclear weapons by one third. France currently operates two thirds of the “nuclear triad”, which consists of land based ballistic missiles, submarine launched missiles, and airborne nuclear weapons. France gave up the land based missiles several years ago, and is now cutting back on […]

…and does a pretty good job.: Out of this thin gruel, [Stephen] Hayes attempted to make a meal in the Standard’s pages this week. He lifted as many bullet points from the report as he could that, out of context, seemed to bolster his theory. He then went about attacking reporters who accurately wrote that […]

Via Kingdaddy and Jason Sigger, Dana Perino on women in defense: Some of the terms I just don’t know, I haven’t grown up knowing. The type of missiles that are out there: patriots and scuds and cruise missiles and tomahawk missiles. And I think that men just by osmosis understand all of these things, and […]

On the heels of new reports suggesting cannibalism was a major part of the political platform of Liberian strongman and Pat Robertson chum Charles Taylor, Ken Silverstein happily notes that accusations of cannibalism against another American client may be overblown. Of Brigadier General Teodoro Obiang, dictator of Equatorial Guinea and beneficiary of support from the […]

On Monday the Wall Street Journal recycled an editorial that conservatives have been using more or less since the late 1940s. The theme runs something like this: Democrats are threatening to abet the cause of (Communism/Islamism) by failing to support our (puppet/strongman/”friend”) through (arms sales/financial support/free trade deals) and as such are revealing themselves to […]

Troubling… Apparently Viktor Bout guaranteed delivery of 100 shoulder launched surface-to-air missiles to FARC shortly before he was arrested in Thailand. Strategic Security Blog: Most alarming are the 100 Igla missiles and that were supposedly “available immediately” to Bout. The Igla is an advanced, Russian IR-seeking, surface-to-air missile that is often fired from a launch […]

Erik Loomis has some thoughts on Kate’s post about “crunchy conservatives”: How will the environmental community deal with new environmentalists who hold strong conservative values? To some extent I wonder how much it matters. Alliances of convenience are powerful and I suspect we will see a lot of that, leading to the passage of important […]

Admiral William Fallon, chief of CENTCOM, has resigned. It was widely expected that Fallon would leave, but this is earlier than expected; I had some thoughts here on why he was leaving. The Esquire profile may have been a catalyst, as few senior officers would enjoy the kind of spotlight it focused. No clear word […]