In a perfect world, I would be more worried about the revelation that Georgian officials recently thwarted the transfer of Russian weapons-grade uranium for the second time in less than two years. Georgian security officials arrested a Russian man carrying a little under four ounces of the nasty stuff, breaking the smuggling chain. There was […]

Time Travelers My fellow Americans, we are all time travelers. It is not as romantic as one would think. We do it slowly enough that we do not notice, day to day. It is only when we confront an image from the past, or the mirror, that we realize that we have been dropped down […]

I knew something was wrong when I headed for bed last night, though I have known something was off for weeks. I wrote it off to everything else that was going on. The pretty music on the radio was ominous. It should have been the voices that murmur to themselves all day, back there in […]

In early 1946, America stood at the apex of military triumph even as its forces melted away. The Atomic Bomb had changed the world- that much was clear as day, though the rest was a little foggy. What the Manhattan Project had delivered, though, was still not fully understood. The enterprise may have been the […]

Voyage to Bikini The Americans were nervous for the first few weeks. They had been at war, and now they were in the harbor of their enemy. They manned their guns at an advanced state of alert, though the most threatening thing they saw was Japanese civilians peering at them with curiosity, and bathing nude […]

It is sometimes said that the Department of War never lost one, and the Department of Defense never won a conflict. There is some room to quibble, since at the time we considered the first Gulf War to be a victory, since it liberated Kuwait from Saddam. But in the larger strategic context, the unpleasantness […]

Men have always had their weapons. It is in the DNA of the species. But periodically ones arrive that are remarkable for their force or effect. The sling, for example, which propels a rock at greater speed than the arm alone. David had one, and Goliath could not adapt quick enough. Other peoples had their […]

I am hooked on the television thriller �24� again. They aired another couple episodes of the new season last night. I went to bed with the image of a suit-case sized nuclear device being detonated in Los Angeles, someplace. It is just a small one, and I remember the technology from other times. The rest […]

I am perched on the balcony, looking quizzically at the sky. The jet stream is toying with Washington, crossing up and across from the Gulf. Meanwhile, there is something fierce and awful happening out west, arctic sub-zero in Colorado and freezing rain from Texas to Illinois, but there is nothing here but uncertain drizzle. Could […]

The Accidental Wilsonian I am a sucker for museums. I like ’em big, like the British Museum, or the Air and Space Museum. I like ’em found by the roadside, and exult in the tacky attractions that dot the old pre–interstate routes west across America. Best of all, I like the small and intimate museums […]