Tech Central Station December 22, 2004 The nation’s capital has been distracted this week by an issue more compelling than terrorism, the war in Iraq, Social Security reform, or Bernard Kerik’s love life: the fate of Major League Baseball in D.C. At the 11th hour last Tuesday evening, the city council approved a bait-and-switch bill proposed by Chairman…
Author: James Joyner
Tech Central Station December 14, 2004 Army National Guard Specialist David Qualls and seven of his comrades filed suit against the Defense Department over what they charge is the unfair extension of their active duty obligation beyond the term they agreed to. Qualls signed up with the Arkansas National Guard under the “Try-One” enlistment option which, according…
Tech Central Station December 1, 2004 The writer Matthew Yglesias makes a bold assertion in The American Prospect magazine: For months now, skeptics of George W. Bush’s Iraq policy have been warning that the present path could lead to bloody civil war. More recently, proponents of continued U.S. military presence have been warning that bloody civil war would be…
Tech Central Station November 3, 2004 By the time you read this, Senator Kerry will have done the honorable thing and conceded the election to President Bush. The Associated Press reported Kerry’s call to the president thusly: “Congratulations, Mr. President,” Kerry said in the conversation described by sources as lasting less than five minutes. One of the…
Tech Central Station August 27, 2004 Within hours of the 9/11 Commission’s issuance of its 516 page report, Senator John Kerry charged that, were he president, he would immediately enact its recommendations down to the dot over every “i” and the cross over every “t.” Rather than responding that a president, as opposed to an absentee senator, must…
Tech Central Station August 10, 2004 The pseudonymous blogger N.Z. Bear issues a bold proclamation: “I’m going to go on record and predict that the Swift Boat Veterans kerfuffle won’t just be a major negative for Kerry: it will be a campaign-killer.” His rationale is that, if any of these charges stick, it will cement the image…
Tech Central Station August 2, 2004 For the decade after the Cold War, the United States military strategy was built around a scenario involving two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts with Iraq and North Korea. Much derided by analysts throughout that period, the doctrine was formally abandoned with the September 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. Ironically, the…
Strategic Insights, Volume III, Issue 7 (July 2004) Over the last month, there has been renewed debate as to the validity of arguments used by the Bush Administration to justify the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. Most of the discussion has focused on the extent of Saddam’s ties to Osama bin Laden’s…
Tech Central Station June 18, 2004 The 9-11 Commission has issued “Overview of the Enemy,” its preliminary assessment of the al Qaeda network. Early press attention has focused on the conclusion that there was “no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.” However, as Troy University political scientist Steven…
Tech Central Station June 1, 2004 The massive hiring in the security sector in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks has left us with a huge backlog of people waiting for federal security clearances. A recent General Accounting Office report estimated the total at 360,000 — including 188,000 civilian contractors for the Defense Department alone. The average…