I have not said anything about the disaster in Burma, because I haven't had anything to say beyond "It's a disaster." And, that people should call the country Burma -- as the Bush Administration, Senators Clinton, McCain*, and Obama, and the Washington Post do -- rather than Myanmar, the term chosen by its junta and now accepted by CNN, NPR, and the New York Times.

My wife and I have been to Burma several times over the last twenty years. The first time was in the summer of 1988, around the time of the August 8 uprising and subsequent bloody repression of monks and students. The most recent was a little more than a year ago, a few days before another bloody round of repression. Like almost everyone who has been in the country, we have viewed its regime as a peculiarly pre-modern and backward form of evil. It does not seems capable of thoroughly-organized evil and repression, as in the old Soviet system. Rather it displays a benighted, superstitious, and almost unthinking indifference to whether its people suffer and die....

I have written before about the seemingly unstoppable proliferation of checkpoints and obstacles to movement in the West Bank.

Trying to get some progress on easing this closure-which is a prerequisite for improving Palestinian daily life and economic prospects-was again a focus of Secretary Rice's visit to Israel and the PA this past weekend.

Rice met with the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on no less than three occasions in the course of what was only a two-day visit. The main subject of these confabs: these restrictions on movement. On the one hand Rice scores high for perseverance and effort-and not just because one meeting with Barak, let alone three, is not much fun. But alongside that it is remarkable, and not in a good way, that the top diplomat of the world's only superpower is reduced to the role of arguing over and counting a couple of dozen obstacles to movement out of a total of over 600 in place in the West Bank...

In this Blogging Heads excerpt, Matthew Yglesias, blogger at The Atlantic, and New America Fellow/Atlantic Associate Editor Reihan Salam use the U.S.-China relation to explain how the United States could spark conflict with another nation when it relentlessly applies its taken-for-granted norm to whatever country it encounters.

The excerpt is viewable below. For the full "diavlog," please visit BloggingHeads.tv.

This is kind of a big deal. Glenn Kessler explains why, perfectly....

This trip to Israel and today to Palestine has been extremely eye-opening. Condoleezza Rice will be here on Monday -- and there is antipathy to her trip at the highest levels of government.

I've been told that she comes with no plan, no ideas, no pressure to move in any direction whatsoever. According to a source very close to Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert, she doesn't even ask questions about the basic positions on each side so as to understand the "gaps" and then to offer ideas -- or even pressure on the Israelis and Palestinians -- to close the gaps. Those engaged credibly in the peace process here want American engagement -- and want the U.S. to play a role in defining "best options" among many competing visions of how this is going to work out.

I'll have more to say later regarding some surprising perspectives I've encountered about Hamas....

In this Blogging Heads excerpt, Michael Goldfarb, editor of the Weekly Standard's The Blog, and Blake Hounshell, web editor at Foreign Policy, try to figure out why the Bush Administration still lashes its Paksitan policy to Pervez Musharraf in the wake of his defeat, which signals the inauguration of a democratic government. Later, they also discuss how democracy in Pakistan will enhance counterinsurgency effort in the region. This excerpt touches on a number of ideas and concerns raised by New America's foreign policy experts.

The excerpt is viewable below. For the full "diavlog," please visit BloggingHeads.tv.

I know how Hillary Clinton must feel. A few years back, I sat half naked on the examining table as my doctor pored over my charts. "Anything wrong?" I finally asked after a couple minutes of uncomfortable silence. "No," he replied, "I'm just trying to figure out what's going to kill you."

Sen. Clinton is still alive, but much of the blogosphere, convinced that the end of her presidential run is near, is busy conducting what can only be called the premortem....

A friend, John McAuliff, has a letter in the New York Times today in response to a very good editorial the Times ran last week titled "Twilight of the Dictators: And a Chance for Cuba -- and the U.S."

McAuliff reminds that before Bush tightened restrictions on Cuba by executive order in 2004, non-tourist people-to-people initiatives were on the upswing. These were choked off by Bush.

I think that this represents the minimum base-line that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should speak to when discussing taking US-Cuba relations a different direction. It's one thing to talk about opening family-related travel and increasing the amount allowed in remittances of Cuban-American families to their relatives in Cuba. It's another not to even talk about restoring what existed before George Bush began paying off the elders in Miami's exile community for their role in manipulating Florida's election results in 2000.

Hillary Clinton needs to do a serious "full policy review" of her Cuba position -- and Obama needs to go farther than he already has. The benchmark that existed in 2003 should be a minimum start in this process....

Sorry, I’ve been so quiet lately. Strange combination of being really busy and, when I blog, not being able to finish a post.

But ISIS has acquired GOV/2008/4. Although David and Jackie have an excellent write-up and Andy discussed it some, I want to pull out what I think is the most important feature — growing detail about why the US and IAEA are so worked up about Iran’s past behavior.

Generally, speaking the report divides the outstanding questions into 3 categories. Iran’s answers are …

• “… consistent with” information available to the IAEA. (Po-210, Gchine)

• “… not inconsistent with” information available to the IAEA (Contamination at, and Procurement for, Lavizan-Shian)

• “… still not provided.” (i.e. Alleged Studies, aka “The Laptop of Death”)

A colleague asked me, “What’s the difference between ‘consistent with’ and ‘not inconsistent with’?” In this context, I believe the answer is this:

Although Iran’s story on the uranium contamination and suspicious procurement linked to the Physics Research Center at Lavizan-Shian holds together (“not inconsistent with” a benign explanation), the IAEA is hinting that the links between PHRC and the “alleged studies on the green salt project, high explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle” are still very, very suspicious....

The Institute for Science and International Security has obtained a copy of IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei’s report on Iran.

The report makes it clear that Iran has no intention of addressing the most sensitive of the outstanding questions, namely those that are most closely associated with a nuclear weapons development program. Iran continues to insist that it never had any such program, and considers allegations to this effect to be entirely baseless and not worth addressing. If that’s the case, then ElBaradei’s transparency process has exhausted itself and it is time for a third UNSC sanctions resolution coupled with a real multilateral negotiation process...