SEPTEMBER 11 WAS NOT A JOKE William Arkin delivered this talk early in October and I just rediscovered it. Arkin is a national security expert who writes periodically for the Washington Post, and one of a small handful of voices I turn to for clarity. He hits sixteen nails on the head with this one. Arkin starts off by mentioning a reporter friend who returned to the national security beat last fall after 10 years away from the Pentagon. He writes: "Not having paid much attention to the subject matter for more than a decade, he told me how stunned he was at the chumminess and atmosphere of the daily briefing. If you've watched a briefing on C-SPAN, you know that when Rumsfeld is in the room, the place is rocking: the secretary, to his credit, appears more often before a hostile audience than any other secretary in modern memory. Cameras wait for the pithy remarks. Reporters laugh at Rumsfeld's quips and evasions. Hey, the guy is clever, and he clearly has come into his own as Secretary of War... But it is war we are talking about. It isn't funny. It is not a partisan political issue. And no one in the current administration has the right to claim that Democrats or reporters or plain old vanilla citizens care less about American security that they do. I'm not talking about whether Rumsfeld or Cheney or Bush feels some obligation to divulge the war plan or spill secrets. They don't and it doesn't bother me at all that they don't. But there is something very wrong with the chumminess itself..." Arkin then goes through a laundry list of wins for bin Laden, paternalistic requests from various administration officials to trust them on terrorism or Iraq or national security... He goes on, "The bad guys have arguably done fairly well under this administration, and there are a lot of questions about strategy and ultimate outcomes in Iraq, and we are supposed to accept blindly that the administration knows what it is doing?" It's a long speech Arkin delivered to the War College, and it's exceptional in its balance, clarity and honesty. It might just be the best piece of long discourse I've read on al Qaeda, Iraq and the state of the nation.

RECIPE FOR INSPECTION What does a weapons of mass destruction inspection look like, anyway? The Christian Science Monitor's brief walk-though of the process at the Al Hakam facility near Baghdad explains inspections quite clearly -- why they take time, and how they can be successful.

THE BEAT IS DEAD Old news in the lightning fast world of the Web, but I happened to like this appreciation from Flak Magazine. As the lyrics said, "He's the greatest of the great, get it straight he's great/ Playing fame 'cause his name is known in every state/ His name is Jay to see him play will make you say:/ 'Goddamn, that DJ made my day!'"

IRAQI ENDGAMES David Ignatius waits until the end of his commentary to make what may be one of the more important points. Saddam Hussein is going to lose, Ignatius says, regardless of whether he stands firm and loses a military engagement with the U.S. or if he gives in to inspections and watches his regime collapse from within. "The danger," Ignatius says, "is how many Americans, Israelis and Arabs will he take down with him? The Iraqi leader has an endgame strategy, too. We just don't know what it is."

WHERE'S WALDO? The head of Interpol, an international law enforcement agency, says Osama bin Laden is alive, well and planning a series of coordinated attacks against several countries. On the heels of last month's Congressional hearings that included warnings that al Qaeda is as dangerous as it was prior to last September 11, and this morning's report in the Washington Post assessing the war in Afghanistan and the changing tactics of al Qaeda cells, this is not the most reassuring news.

TUNISIAN WEB LOGGER JAILED Tunisia's not the easiest place to practice the art of open debate, and Zouhair Yahyaoui has discovered that online dissent's no safer than newsprint. His web log TUNeZINE was critical of the government, and was also creative and honest. Internet, criticism, creativity, honesty... a bad combination. The University of Southern California's Annenberg School's site has a well-written, detailed article.

SQUIRRELICIDE From ABC News, in regards to yesterday's post on the mad squirrel: "The small town of Knutsford in Cheshire, England, is resting easier after a menacing, bloodthirsty, though somewhat furry, terrorist was shot and killed by a vengeful grandfather."

GOT IT ON Last night I warily went to Chop Suey Books to see David Rees talk about his Internet political cartoon phenom "Get Your War On." I half-expected a bedraggled, dredlocked art student with staunchly far-left views on world affairs, and was pleased to discover that Rees is articulate, hilariously self-deprecating and sharp as a tack. He also has a problem making eye contact with his audience (or there were a lot of mice scurrying around his feet distracting him). But it didn't stop him from laying into corporations like Royal Caribbean who blatantly linked their products to September 11, or expressing his frustration with the landmine situation in Afghanistan and the complicity of the U.S. government in regards to Exxon's brutal policies in Indonesia. Rees, who said his sense of activism is more punk than hippy, pointed to D. Boon of the Minutemen as being an inspiration for his work. After perusing a few newspaper ads, including one from the "angels who watch from above" (and sponsored by Phillips 66) that he ripped into, Rees presented the Get Your War On strips, took questions and showed a short film about landmines in Afghanistan. You can view Get Your War On here, while the opening link to his publisher does an excellent job of explaining what GYWO is intended to do. Punchline interviews Rees here.

THE BEST WHORES SING AND DANCE Indian actress and activist Shabana Azmi's suggestion for a leading Muslim cleric from New Delhi who called for Indian Muslims to join the jihad in Afghanistan last year caused quite a stir. Azmi said it would be no problem to air-drop the cleric into Kandahar, apparently without a parachute. The shahi iman bit back, saying, "I won't respond to singing, dancing whores." Azmi, who is in Washington this weekend to perform in a Hindustani version of "Love Letters," is just one of a growing handful of outspoken, moderate Muslims in India.

VIRGINIA SLATED TO EXECUTE PAKISTANI Few people recall the 1993 attack outside of CIA headquarters that left two employees dead at a stoplight, killed by shotgun blasts. Next Friday, Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani who killed the two and injured three others, is scheduled to be executed in Virginia. Kasi, who says he is not a terrorist, has issued a statement asking that there be no retaliation for his death; the State Department has issued a warning that his execution could result in retaliation against Americans around the world.

WAKING UP IN AFGHANISTAN? The nation's top military officer and a recent CIA assessment have suggested that it's time to shift tactics in Afghanistan away from the increasingly fruitless "search and destroy" raids on al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. The CIA report says that "reconstruction may be the single most important factor in increasing security throughout Afghanistan and preventing it from again becming a haven for terrorists." Another important task that the U.S. has been reluctant to pursue is disarming regional warlords and standing up a centralized security force in Afghanistan.

DO WE, OR DON'T WE, OR DO WE, OR...? If you can get past the mental image of Christopher Hitchens as a giant sloth with an ink pen, you might want to have a go (as our Brit friends say) at his recent slate.com article laying out the counter case to the case to the counter case... well, basically explaining why there might be good reasons for waging war against/in Iraq. One of the curious, interesting points he made is that "after Sept. 11, several conservative policy-makers decided in effect that there were 'root causes' behind the murder-attacks. These 'root causes' lay in the political slum that the United States has been running in the region, and in the rotten nexus of client-states from Riyadh to Islamabad. Such causes cannot be publicly admitted, nor can they be addressed all at once. But a slum-clearance program is beginning to form in the political mind." Hitchens says this policy-makers believe the cornerstone to this "political slum" lies in Baghdad, which I can accept. I'd like to think the end-game of this political shell game might involve some reshuffling of our regional bedmates (namely Saudi Arabia and Pakistan), but unlike Hitchens I remain unable to believe the Bush administration honestly wants to walk this path.

BAHAYIRA BOUND About four years ago, a friend's roommate in Cairo rented a car with a few folks and headed into the desert west of the city bound for the Bahayira Oasis. When he returned, he told us an amusing, nightmarish story of checkpoints manned by annoyed soldiers, almost losing the road in the middle of the night and smashing the car into the side of a guardpost. It sounded very much like a trip I was glad not to have experienced. Jenny Jobbins paints quite a different picture of her trip to Bahayira.

DATE TRENDS When I was a reporter during the first Bush recession in 1991, I asked my editor if I could do a colorful economic story that looked at the plummeting prices in the sex industry. (I was propositioned constantly on my nightly walk home.) He said no. Al-Ahram Weekly tries a different approach, looking at the political mood in Egypt during Ramadan with a visit to a date stand. Dates are one of the first items served at iftar, the sunset meal that breaks the daily fast. And date merchants name their varieties of dates. "This year date traders, perhaps desperate to increase sales, have chosen to name the best and most expensive (priced between LE24-27 per kilo) of date brands after Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat. And as public wrath continues to mount against US policies in Iraq and the Israeli oppression, Bush and Sharon are the sobriquets attached to the worst and cheapest of dates, priced between LE1 and LE1.50 per kilo." That says something about public opinion.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF ATTACK We get snipers. The Brits get mad squirrels attacking residents in Chesire. "The rogue squirrel's latest attack was on toddler Kelsi Morley who was bitten on the forehead. 'It was awful because she (Kelsi) was spinning around and we couldn't get it off,' her mother told the newspaper."

SAD DAYS FOR WINONA BOYS Andrew Leonard reminds us of the days of yore, when Winona was the pale champion of hipster kids (remember "Heathers"?) and slacker lads by the handful were scuffling around with flannel shirts tied around their waists, pining for a pert-nosed alternagirl to make them pasta with pesto. How times have changed.

CHOICES IN PAKISTAN Tensions between continued military control and an ad-hoc form of democracy are likely to grow in Pakistan, a result of last month's regional elections. An outcome of those elections, which tilted sharply toward religious conservatives, is the creation of a coalition of pro-democracy groups and the religious bloc of Islamist cleric Fazl-ur Rahman. That coalition might be enough to put Rahman in the prime minister's chair, forcing President Musharraf to dissolve parliament or follow through on his commitment to let parliament take on more of the daily operations of government.

BALKAN NIGHTMARES Despite a renewal of effort by several international NGO groups and increased coordination by European police, the number of women being forced into prostitution continues to soar. According to Jane's Intelligence Review (a leading security and intelligence news service, not to be confused with the women's magazine), the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports that "500,000 women are illegally trafficked in the world each year, of whom 200,000 pass through the Balkan region. That the DEA has been estimating numbers of trafficked women points to the close relationship of the crime with heroin trafficking and other illicit businesses prevalent in the region. Research conducted on behalf of the EU Balkan Stability Pact in 2002 concluded that trafficking in women is the single largest criminal business in the Balkans in terms of cash turnover, exceeding even heroin trafficking." There's a more detailed look in a U.S. State Department report issued earlier this year.

MIRROR, MIRROR Haaretz sizes up the soon-to-be outgoing Sharon government and finds it lacking. In some ways, the challenges Sharon faced (and largely failed) mirror the ongoing challenges of the Bush administration. Haaretz editorializes: "The violent conflict in the territories, the terror within Israel, the expected war with Iraq, the economic crisis, and the social pressures all make a stable government a vital necessity - but not a government based on the world view espoused by Sharon and his partners on the right... the extraordinarily broad parliamentary support that Sharon enjoyed did not lead to achievements in any of the areas for which his government was responsible. The policy of force that Sharon applied in the occupied territories did not put an end to terrorism against Israeli citizens. The war he declared against the Palestinian Authority exacted the largest blood price that Israel has paid since the Lebanon War. Israel's relations with its neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, hit a new nadir. His evasion of every initiative for resuming diplomatic activity and the continued expansion of the settlements eroded Israel's status in Europe. The security deterioration and the diplomatic standstill raised the unemployment rate, reduced economic activity, impaired growth and also recently affected the country's international credit rating."

RUMINATING IN REYKJAVIK I randomly and rarely pop over to bara.is to enjoy the simple design of her site, and the poetry of her journal entries and photos. Click on the Roman numerals at the bottom left of her page to explore the site content.

THEIR CUPS BOILETH OVER It's easy to forget that there is a sizable minority of passionate liberals in the United States, especially in the wake of Tuesday's elections. That's why I spent a few moments this morning perusing the reader comments at angrydems.com, which range from spluttering rants of mindless passion to thoughtful statements of clarity. It's going to be an interesting ride in American politics.

THE MAN IN BLACK Every new release by Johnny Cash in the last decade seems destined to be his last, but fighting back from his death bed at least twice, he continues to make his mark on America music. His new release, "American IV: The Man Comes Around," continues his magical relationship with producer Rick Rubin and sees Cash deliver impressive remakes of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" and of the old Irish standard "Danny Boy," among others. NPR's Bob Edwards sat down with Cash for this interview.

SUMMATIONS Someone just emailed asking for my take on what happened last night, which isn't too far off from what many commentators are saying. Three simple points sum it up for me, two of which look at why and one which explores what's next:

1) The Democrats deserved to lose. This wasn't a case of not having a strong message or missing opportunities. The Democrats were adrift in the 1980s, briefly regained momentum around their core in 1992, became afraid of their own agenda several years later (remember all the waffling on: gays in the military, national health care, the environment, women's rights, civil rights issues?) and never recovered. They've spent little effort on building a bench at the state level that could rise to lead the national party. Even at his worst (i.e., seven of his eight years in office), Clinton knew how to be passionate about things that stirred people -- the Democrats have no one like that at a national level today.

2) Bush is popular. Like it or not, believe it or not, there are a lot of people in this country who find the President to be credible, compassionate and a capable leader. He has his Republican base as duped as Clinton had his Democratic base duped in the 90s -- I find the two men to be oddly similar in their ability to be so damned disingeneous. But, Bush carried this election, along with a Republican party that spent the 1990s building a core of candidates who knew how to look moderate, quietly moving the Christian Coalition to the back row (and giving them backstage passes) and focusing on their constituents: big business and the rich. September 11 happened along and allowed them to reinforce their base with a heavy-handed worldview that sadly resonates with many voters. The whole hubristic sense of saving the world in spite of itself is a good reminder of just how deeply rooted the spirit of Manifest Destiny remains in this nation.

3) Looking ahead, think Reagan. Next year you'll see the shades of James Watt emerge as an industry-friendly energy bill passes, the shades of Newt Gingrich as an industry-friendly healthcare bill passes, and the shades of Don Regan as we spiral deeper into deficit spending and recession. And expect to see a replay of the Schultz (affable, well-intentioned Secretary of State) vs. the military establishment as the realists push forward their one superpower worldview.

RAMADAN The holy month for 1.2 billion Muslims around the world began at sunrise this morning. Explore IslamiCity's Ramadan site for information on Islamic culture and Ramadan.

CROW Ah, sweet, sweet defeat. Let's see... Dole won, Mondale lost, the charming Stephanie Herseth fumbled, Kirk choked and Bush won. Zero for five ain't bad.

POUR HOT WAX IN MY EARS The next time I make the mistake of going to see a British, Quaker, human rights activist speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the possibility of war with Iraq with a crowd largely composed of retired military, intelligence and State Department officials, someone please bludgeon me with some mutton or something.

SADDAM.COM Some folks over at WIRED hacked into an email account listed on Saddam Hussein's homepage and found hundreds of emailed missives from around the world to the dictator, including suggestions for combating American troops, words of support for his government and criticism of his regime. The gamut, really. You can write him yourself at press@uruklink.net. No one's sure if he actually checks his email, but someone from WIRED might.

AH, THE MAKEOVER As Sarah Hatter prepares for a sedate life of study in Charleston, she presents to her reading public: Proposition 1 - Hatter Life Reformation. In the process, she almost convinces me to stop buying an extra large cafe au lait every morning. Almost. Until I realized that she spends 10 times more than I do on her fancy caramel drinks each month. I am a veritable coffee pauper next to Ms. Hatter.

MY ELECTORAL DREAMS There are only a few things I'd like to see tomorrow morning when I peruse the news, and here they are: Dole defeated in North Carolina Senate race; Mondale squeaks out a victory in Minnesota; 32-year-old Georgetown Law graduate trounces former South Dakota governor. And if Ron Kirk somehow wins the Senate seat in Texas, and Jeb Bush stumbles in Florida, so much the better.

ICELAND ROCKS Here's the line that convinced me that I needed to give Sigur Ros a listen: "If Godspeed You Black Emperor! looked out the window and said, ‘You know, maybe the world isn’t a vast, apocalyptic shit-hole after all,’ they might sound like Sigur Ros." The new release from this Iceland ambient-rock ensemble can be called many things, including strangely compelling.

STUMBLING TO WAR Strategic Forecasting's latest read on al Qaeda and U.S. strategy is not the most optimistic. While it falls short of predicting calamity, the analysis suggests that the Iraqi war drums of the Bush administration are being beat in large part because the U.S. is reluctant or unable to craft a broader public strategy that takes into consideration the serious core of al Qaeda support -- in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. But the hope that a quick decisive strike against Iraq would send a message to other regimes has been mired in a global debate. In the meantime, a series of small al Qaeda attacks around the globe, and Islamist electoral victories in Pakistan, indicate that the regional dynamic might be continuing the shift in South Asia.

BLURRING DISTINCTIONS The history of conflict between Russian and Chechnya is almost two centuries long, but the past decade has illuminated a grim reality: both sides are able, willing and in some cases eager to resort to violence, torture and the wholesale slaughter of civilians. It is this distinction, Fareed Zakaria claims, that makes recent statements from the Bush administration supporting the Putin government's Chechnyan policy distressing. It's a distinction that we'd better start paying attention to if the United States has any desire to view the world through a moral lense, rather than that of political expediency. Zakaria writes, "The lesson to be drawn is that there is no moral clarity here. Terrorism is bad, but those fighting terror can be very nasty, too. And the manner in which they fight can make things much, much worse. It is a lesson we had better learn fast, because from Egypt to Pakistan to Indonesia, governments around the world are heightening their repression and then selling it to Washington as part of the war on terror. Russian officials called the Chechen fighters 'rebels' or 'bandits' until recently. Now they are all 'international Islamic terrorists.'"

GET YOUR WAR ON IN RICHMOND David Rees created what might just become one of the more enduring pop cultural representations of the Bush administration with his online comic-cum-editorial "Get Your War On." Three panel strips that use truly horrid corporate clip art of businessmen talking on the phone combined with Rees' in-your-face read on the terrorism, war or political news of the day, all served up with deliberately clumsy, hip enthusiasm. A taste (without the clip art) --"You know what I love?" the guy with glasses exclaims. "I love how we're dropping food aid packages into a country that's one big fucking minefield! That's good!" ... "Well, it turns the relief effort into a fun game for the Afghan people -- a game called 'See if you have any fucking arms left to eat the food we dropped after you step on a landmine trying to retrieve it!,'" replies a straight-faced starched shirt. Rees will be in Richmond this Thursday speaking at Chop Suey books at 7 p.m.

MANY TARGETS, ONE BULLET Vernon Loeb doesn't say anything new today, but it's certainly important to remind ourselves every now and again that military-cum-intelligence strikes are an excellent way to prevent immediate terrorism attacks, and a less-than-useful way to turn the longer term tide. Which is why the recent report released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence should raise eyebrows when it points out that, "while we are striking a blow against al Qaeda -- the preeminent global terrorist threat -- the underlying causes that drive terrorists persist." As I've mentioned before, economics and politics and demographics combine create a frightening bubble of disenfranchised, angry people in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

STORM'S A'COMING Josh Marshall provides a succinct review of Kenneth Pollack's book, "The Threatening Storm." Marshall gives Pollack props for laying out a compelling argument that doesn't turn a blind eye to the sloppy methodology of the Bush administration. He gives a more in-depth read in The Washington Monthly. (Marhsall also provides me with my new favorite catch-phrase for Bush's foreign policy: petulant unilateralism.)

GUY NOIR REMEMBERS WELLSTONE Some things are just made for radio, and a small portion of such things translate well into print. This is one of them.

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND... WELL, IT'S ALL SUBJECTIVE, ISN'T IT? Ariel serves up a short, simple homage to the critters that have had bad public relations over the years.

ASK ALICE Starr and company did not disappoint this weekend. The revamped "Alice" was more eerie and creepy and magical then when it premiered last spring, and the two new pieces were poignant and whirling good fun (respectively). And, Lord knows, it's always nice to see a troupe of dancers who don't starve themselves...

THE END OF HISS (ANALOG ROMANCE BITES) Liz sent me a link to this romatically penned love letter to the muse of many an adolescent (circa 1976 to 1992): the mixed tape. I remember recording Pink Floyd's "The Wall" by placing my Radio Shack cassette deck against the speaker of my clock radio, as well as the last mixed tape I made. Now I just send people 20GB iPods with 4,312 songs and Charlton Heston's last NRA speech digitized and ready to play.

EAST OR WEST? Turkey's Justice and Development Party (known as AKP) won a plurality in yesterday's elections, raising eyebrows and concerns about the longer term intent of the religious party with fairly solid roots in political Islam. Party leaders were quick to downplay those links, but it will be interesting to see how things play out in this lynchpin nation as it continues to wrestle with a crumbled economy, its rejection by the European Union, and rising tensions in the region.

CAUSES OR EFFECTS Even as initiatives against terrorism move into the shadows, America's last nation-state-free war is sputtering to something just short of a halt. The flow of illegal drugs into the United States in increasing, and the destabilizing effect of drug traffiking on some of the more fledgling governments in Latin America is on a parallel increase. And not too many people are paying attention at the moment.