Keeping up on what is happening in the Middle East: Two "must check" blogs

I’m off for two days to help care for my youngest grandchildren, Rody and Sophia, seven months old today.

In my efforts to stay on top of what is happening in Iraq and what the Bush Administration appears to be planning regarding Iran, these two blogs have become essential daily reading:

1. Juan Cole’s Informed Comment. For instance, today he links to Nermeen Mufti explains why Iraqis are pessimistic on both the security and political front.

2. Informed Comment Global Affairs, a group blog launched by Juan Cole a few months ago. Here’s an excerpt from the September 2nd post by contributor Barnett Rubin, Administration's Iran... which opens with, “The Sunday Times of London reports from Washington a story I have not seen in any U.S. media: that "the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days.’ The source of this report was Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center.

”Speaking at a meeting sponsored by the journal National Interest, edited by Irving Kristol, father of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol Debate stated:

"US military planners were not preparing for ‘pinprick strikes’ against Iran’s nuclear facilities. ‘They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,’ he said.

“As in the run-up to the war in Iraq, President Bush is maintaining the fiction that he is ‘committed for now to the diplomatic route,’ but many signs indicate that the decision to attack has been taken as irrevocably as the decision to attack Iraq in the fall of 2002.”

(photo of grandson Rody at about 5 months and me)