Egyptian President Mubarak terminally ill?

Read here.

Quite an interesting and possibly scary notion that the Egyptian president may be on his way out. Egypt is not the most stable country an a succession crisis is not what the region needs at this time. Although, perhaps Mubarak has taken steps to avoid such a crisis given that he's been much much more aware of his condition than it seems the rest of us have. Time will tell...

Big Brother

The Washington Post did an in-depth report on the ever growing top-secret world of the US government. The article is definitely worth a read, or if you're hurried a quick scan; but it should not be ignored. It does an excellent job in expressing how unwieldy and ineffective America's secret intelligence agency has become by focusing on the various problems plaguing the top-secret world. It covers the turf battles amongst the agencies, the problems of an overdose of information, the budget problems and the greatest problem of all: Congress keeps pumping money into it.

A particular quotation from Major-General John Custer caught my eye. It sums up the situation well, "...after 4 1/2 years, this organization had never produced one shred of information that helped me prosecute three wars!"

And a most accurate assement by the Washington Post from early in the article furthers the case, "...lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate."

More here...

Colombia coming into its own

In a time of emerging-market juggernauts, Colombia gets little notice. Its $244 billion economy is only the fifth-largest in Latin America, a trifle next to Brazil, the $2 trillion regional powerhouse. Yet against all odds Colombia has become the country to watch in the hemisphere. In the past eight years the nation of 45 million has gone from a crime- and drug-addled candidate for failed state to a prospering dynamo. The once sluggish economy is on a roll. Oil and gas production are surging, and Colombia’s MSCI index jumped 15 percent between January and June, more than any other stock market this year.

Read the rest here

Is the US deploying misiles outside of China?

Possibly. Time Magazine has an interesting article on the Ohio-Class submarines now appearing on China's border. These subs are outfitted with Tomahawk Cruise missiles, as opposed to the Nuclear Trident missiles they carried during the Cold War war. According to Bonnie Glaser, cited in the article, the US is bolstering it's forces in the Pacific and naturally, the regional power, China, is going to notice.

Here's the article:

Photos from Afghanistan

A collection of photos coming out of America's longest war courtesy of the Big Picture.

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/afghan_06_30_10/a01_24008185.jpg

A history of US defense spending

Read the full article here...

Petraeus will get whatever he wants?

Well, well, well — where have we seen this before? The indiscreet U.S. commander whose tongue digs his own grave. The stunning resignation submitted within hours of the magazine's online posting of the story. And General David Petraeus — yet again — as the go-to choice as America's turnaround specialist. Amidst all the nonstop chatter from pundits, politicians, and former ambassadors, allow me to distance myself from the familiar situation I was in with Admiral William Fallon and sift through the tea leaves to look ahead at Petraeus's new gig. Because there are magazine stories, and then there is war. And because — who knows? — Afghanistan may be a lot better off, and Obama may have picked his replacement in more ways than one.

Read the full article here...