Robert Farley

CONVENTIONAL CAPABILITY. Yglesias writes: Also worth mentioning in this context is the basic point that the Iranian and Syrian militaries just aren’t able to conduct meaningful offensive military operations. The Saudi, Kuwait, and Jordanian militaries are even worse. True, up to a point. Iranian and Syrian offensive capabilities are a joke compared to the United […]

THE SURGE IS WORKING. …or so Max Boot declares in the midst of a hopelessly dishonest op-ed in the LA Times last week. Boot doesn’t even bother to wade into the statistical morass of casualty figures, instead asserting simply that a guy he knows in Baghdad told him that casualties are down. No time frame, […]

A HACK VS. A PROFESSIONAL. From Defense News, a report on U.S. Comptroller David Walker’s testimony in the House, and his confrontation with Illeana Ros-Lehtinen: When U.S. Comptroller General David Walker finished delivering his rather grim assessment of ongoing violence and lack of political progress in Iraq, he was confronted by an unhappy Rep. Ileana […]

ON NOT LOOKING WEAK IN FRONT OF THE RUSSIANS. A bit more is emerging regarding the flight of a half-dozen nuclear warheads from North Dakota to Louisiana last week. Hans at Strategic Security Blog has an excellent discussion of the safety protocols normally associated with the transit of nuclear weapons by air. Also see Jane […]

NUCLEAR ACCIDENT THEORY REVISITED. Via Defense Tech: A B-52 bomber was mistakenly loaded with five nuclear warheads during a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana, a military newspaper reported Wednesday. The bomber carried advanced cruise missiles as part of a Defense Department program to retire 400 of the missiles, the paper said, quoting three officers […]

HOW MANY ARE WE KILLING? There’s a lot of discussion out there about civilian casualty counts, as the argument that casualties in Iraq have dropped would appear to be one of the central measurable claims that the White House will make in defense of the surge. As Ilan Goldberg and others have noted, the statistics […]

NEW FRONTIERS IN MRAP-ERY. At considerable expense, the Pentagon has put the MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, into full production for the Iraq campaign. Unfortunately but predictably, the MRAP’s armor offers insufficient protection against the most advanced insurgent EFPs (Explosively Formed Penetrators), as detailed in a recent USA Today article. According to David […]

ANTI-STATE BUILDING. Reading this Michael Gordon piece, I’m struck by the extent to which the strategy of allying with Sunni tribes amounts to a renunciation of U.S. state-building aims in Iraq. Put simply, enhancing the prestige and capabilities of multiple non-state actors in Iraq is directly contradictory to the aim of constructing a viable nation-state. […]

WITHDRAWAL PREDICTIONS. There was a high powered panel this morning at APSA on strategic withdrawal from Iraq. It included James Wirtz of the Naval War College, John Mearsheimer, Juan Cole, and Stephen Biddle, and unlike many high powered panels actual resulted in some good discussion. Biddle summarized his recent congressional testimony about partial withdrawal, noting […]

DISPATCHES FROM APSA. I’m at the American Political Science Association Conference in Chicago this weekend, and amongst all the noise there actually are some interesting things going on. I attended two panels this morning, the first on blogging and the second on the ISG report. Dan Drezner chaired the blogging panel, which also included Laura […]