James Fallows

Jeffrey Goldberg: Look Who's Blogging


The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg—who joined the magazine from The New Yorker last year—has started a blog.

His first entry, which features an endearingly retro Public Enemy reference as its title, begins with the self-effacing words, "This is almost certainly a mistake." Well, it can't be as big a mistake as championing the invasion of Iraq relying (according to Harper's Ken Silverstein), "heavily on administration sources and war hawks (and in at least one crucial case, a fabricator)."

In March, Goldberg offered a mea culpa on Slate:

I wanted very much for the liberation of Iraq to succeed, for many reasons. I wasn't sure there was an alternative to Saddam's removal, in part because the sanctions regime was collapsing. I believed that Saddam's nuclear ambitions posed an almost immediate threat to national security. I believed that Saddam was a supporter of terrorism.  read more »

And Now for the Bad News: The Word on the War in Iraq

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a weird hostility to predictions.
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a weird hostility to predictions.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks.  read more »

The Kerry Quandary

At last, a smart, informed debate about Iraq.  read more »