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A problem in giving credit where credit is due | Free riding: a deeply embedded media tradition COMMENTARY Scholar J.H. Snider balks on hearing new media practitioners characterized as parasites or leeches and reaches deep down to expose longstanding, not very upfront behavior on the part of old media reporters and editors. (First of two parts) 
It’s not just supply and demand | Must we have $4 gas prices again? And if so, why? COMMENTARY Peter Ashton and Henry Banta say a new, costly speculative bubble—a repeat of last summer—is taking shape, and they suggest ways to reduce the risk. Isn’t this an important job, right now, for those in the Obama administration as they extensively rewrite the rules for financial markets?
Looking backward | An astonishing lack of awareness of the costs of the war in Iraq COMMENTARY Michael Massing thinks the American public needs to know a lot more about what the war meant to Iraqi civilians – and particularly how many Iraqis were killed or injured by our troops during the occupation. That's because Americans needs to better understand that when we do go to war, there is a great toll not only our own people but on the population that we're supposedly going to help. Ninth in a series of articles calling attention to the things we still need to know about torture and other abuses committed by the Bush administration after 9/11.
Body counts return | The wrong metrics in Afghanistan COMMENTARY Using growing body counts as a measure of military success was discredited during the Vietnam War -- and shouldn't be revived in Afghanistan. A former Air Force officer suggests three alternative metrics for assessing the progress – or lack thereof – in Afghanistan.
The overseas press | When Obama talks, the world listens COMMENTARY International reaction, almost all of it favorable, picks up on many angles of the President's speech in Egypt but there is a call for action as well as words. In one place—Saudi Arabia—commentary is highly critical.
From Nieman Reports | Now you see it, now you don’t: The disappearing act of foreign news coverage COMMENTARY McClatchy will have someone in Iran to cover the upcoming elections but it’s a financial balancing act – it means canceling a different overseas assignment. But that's preferable to the more extreme steps being taken by some news organizations.
Brushing up on Keynes, Minsky and Galbraith | Reform how we regulate the financial system? And then what? COMMENTARY Along the lines of be-careful-in-what-you-wish-for, Henry Banta says “the creativity, imagination, cunning, and occasional duplicity of financial asset traders are boundless,” that regulators themselves may get caught up in bubbles, that there is plenty of regulating already in place, and that, given the huge stakes involved, “regulation outlawing financial incredulity or mass euphoria is not a practical possibility.”
The limits of force | Not every 'failed state' is a threat COMMENTARY Using our military to try to deprive al Qaeda of sanctuaries will not bring us immunity from the next terrorist attack, writes a former CIA station chief. That attack can be organized, planned, funded and carried out from any safehouse in any country that allows freedom of movement. By contrast, as long as we use our military to try to mold the world to our liking, we are going to create more and more people and nations who will wish us ill, increasing the likelihood that we will be attacked again.
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