RECOMMENDED READING

With a hearty hat tip to Regan Walker, the Washington Institute has a ME white paper entitled " Security, Reform and Peace: The Three Pillars of US Strategy in the Middle-East". It is over 100 pages long so you won't be getting commentary from me today but relatively soon. A somewhat unlikely, eclectic, group of thinkers put this paper together, from moderate liberals to the hard neocon Right.

For those who subscribe to Foreign Policy magazine and can access the restricted articles, Robert Baer's commonsensical, CIA reforms, proposed in" Wanted: Spies Unlike Us".

A short, Washington Qarterly/CSIS article on the triangular relationship between the U.S., Eastern Europe and the " old Europe " EU.

And Mithras had an unusually explosive post ( 97 comments thus far) on the developments in the slaughter of New Jersey Coptic Christian family. Police have charged local and very non-Muslim thugs with robbery and murder.  ¶ 8:27 AM