If you can’t wait for the print edition, The New York Times obtained a copy of the manuscript and has published it online: click here to read A Different Kind of War: The United States in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) October 2001 – September 2005.

This assessment by Christopher Boucek, who studies Yemen as an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, explains why top counterterrorism experts from the CIA were sent to Yemen last year, the Pentagon is training Yemen’s military, and aid to the country is scheduled to more than double.

Journalists Eric Schmitt and Robert F. Worth examine U.S. efforts in the new Al Qaeda bastion of Yemen.

HIs statement was made during testimony to the Iraq Inquiry Committee chaired by Sir John Chilcot.

In the November issue of Mother Jones, Rachel Morris tells us the plight of the fourth-smallest nation on our warming planet: Tuvalu is slowly sinking back into the Pacific, and its people are emigrating to Auckland, New Zealand. Morris’ story puts a human face on climate change as she describes the immigrants sleeping on grass mats on the side of the road, unable to survive on the $17,000 most male Tuvaluans eke out.

The moral is there’s more than polar bears at stake when it comes to global warming; entire countries are at risk.

Apparently global warming is real.

Then Climategate happened.

The epicenter of our newest -gate is East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) in England.  According to Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, Climategate concerns “some of the world’s leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week’s disclosure of thousands of emails from…CRU.”

Apparently global warming is fudged?

Pray tell, why? Stephens reminds us that the scarier the prospect of global warming is, the larger the sums of money that pour in to combat it. Even if we can’t see the enemy.

And the enemy is the raison d’etre for the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen next week. The Conference is bringing together over 100 heads of state to figure out how to cut greenhouse gases, how much to cut, and how to pay for the cuts. Not only should you not expect binding agreements to come out of the conference, you should expect – as the waves of Climategate crash to shores of the Baltic – questioning on the actual threat of global warming.

Bad timing. More confusion. More questions.

The real, central, burning question remains: Will Al Gore have to return his Oscar?

On November 12, Fergus Hodgson, writing for BradentonHerald.com, compared America’s attempts to spend its way out of economic troubles to a similar approach by Japan 20 years ago. “The only prize the strategy achieved for Japan,” Hodson wrote, “was the largest national debt in the developed world: 200 percent of GDP.” – Japan’s ‘Lost Decade’

In the business section of today’s New York Times, Edmund L. Andrews writes that with “a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb … the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.” – ‘Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government‘

As the 1929 saying goes, “When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches the cold.” It the world heading for the equivalent of a financial pandemic if America’s rising debt gives Uncle Sam the flu?

Tis a shame. Alexander Hamilton was also one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, the necessary precursors to our Constitution.

If you need a reminder of what he looks like, unfold your wallet and take out a ten dollar bill. That’s him.

If you’ve all but forgotten what exactly he did and who exactly he was and where exactly he came from, listen no further than to Tony-winning Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rap about Alexander Hamilton.

The rap was part of the first official White House poetry slam (competition) and featured James Earl Jones, Michael Chabon, and a host of other litterati.

The rap is told from the perspective of none other than…Aaron Burr.

Another hot spot for us to monitor.

Overview of the fight.

News update on the fighting.

A map showing some of the displaced persons in Yemen due to this conflict.

Google map showing the area.  Satellite view shows this is a desolate place to fight.