Previously secret U.S. Air Force official histories of the Vietnam war published today by the National Security Archive disclose for the first time that Central Intelligence Agency contract employees had a direct role in combat air attacks when they flew Laotian government aircraft on strike missions and that the Air Force actively considered nuclear weapons options during the 1959 Laos crisis.

Fighting the War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973

On April 3, David Tornquist, Assistant Inspector General for Rail and Maritime Program Audits and Economic Analysis, testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing & Urban Development regarding Amtrak’s future outlook and FY 2009 budgetary needs. Mr. Tornquist testified to the need for Amtrak to do more to minimize its costs and dependence on Federal subsidies and that its spending initiatives need to make a demonstrable contribution to its bottom line. The Assistant Inspector General drew heavily from ongoing OIG analysis of Amtrak’s financial performance and labor agreement costs, their efforts to achieve operating reform savings, the causes of on–time performance problems, and a review of Amtrak’s capital plan. The Assistant Inspector General testified that Amtrak would need $475 million in FY09 for cash operating losses, $675 million for capital spending, and $266 million for debt service to operate its nationwide system. The Assistant Inspector General stated that Amtrak does not require a FY 09 appropriation to cover retroactive wage costs included in its pending labor agreement.

Amtrak’s Future Outlook and Budgetary Needs

Anthony Cordesman:

If there is any clear message that emerges out of the events of the last few weeks, it is that the risks in Iraq remain high enough so that no one can yet say whether the odds of any kind of US success are better than even. The fact remains, however, that there is still a marginally better case for staying than for leaving.

Moreover, no one in the America should forget that US decisions affect the lives of some 28 million Iraqis, or the responsibility the US bears for its failure to prepare for stability operations and nation-building in going to war, its failure to deploy adequate troops to secure the country, its empowerment of Shi’ite exile movements and its support of de-Baathification and the disbandment of the Iraqi military forces.

Iraq and the Crocker-Petraeus Testimony: The Risks that Only Time and a Sustained US Presence Can Deal With

The farm bill is loaded with pork and environmentally disastrous provisions.

We'll reap what we sow

Misunderstanding Iran's role works to increase its influence in Iraq

Strategic confusion

Two men, two speeches.

Two Speeches on Race

James Fallows, from China:

To spell it out: countries can support powerful and threatening military establishments even if their overall economy is faltering (the old Soviet Union). They can create problems for the world even if they are extremely poor (North Korea). Sometimes economic dislocation itself can make aggression more likely (post-Weimar rise of the Nazis). Often the attempt to escape poverty can cause environmental disaster. And so on.

What I was trying to convey is how different, both intellectually and emotionally, the phenomenon of "China's unstoppable rise" looks if you're actually here seeing the people in the middle of the process, versus how it must sound if you just hear about it from afar.

On poverty and superpower status

one thing that I found particularly interesting is that in this discussion of transformation and training revision NO ONE mentioned FM 3-24; indeed, while the captains we spoke to later in the afternoon knew about it, none we spoke to had read it.

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Patterson Trips II

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in US

The twentieth century is hardly behind us but already its quarrels and its achievements, its ideals and its fears are slipping into the obscurity of mis-memory. In the West we have made haste to dispense whenever possible with the economic, intellectual, and institutional baggage of the twentieth century and encouraged others to do likewise. In the wake of 1989, with boundless confidence and insufficient reflection, we put the twentieth century behind us and strode boldly into its successor swaddled in self-serving half-truths: the triumph of the West, the end of History, the unipolar Ameri-can moment, the ineluctable march of globalization and the free market.

The belief that that was then and this is now embraced much more than just the defunct dogmas and institutions of cold war–era communism. During the Nineties, and again in the wake of September 11, 2001, I was struck more than once by a perverse contemporary insistence on not understanding the context of our present dilemmas, at home and abroad; on not listening with greater care to some of the wiser heads of earlier decades; on seeking actively to forget rather than remember, to deny continuity and proclaim novelty on every possible occasion. We have become stridently insistent that the past has little of interest to teach us. Ours, we assert, is a new world; its risks and opportunities are without precedent.

What Have We Learned, If Anything?