Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Saturday, April 26, 2008

Syrian Briefing Link Dump

By Cernig



Some stuff worth a read on the recent briefing to Congress that purported to show that Syria was building a nuclear weapons program.



Steve Clemons has the transcript of the briefing made to Congress, in full.



The IAEA has said it will investigate the allegations but attacked the US for the 8-month delay in revealing its data and Israel for side-stepping international law with it's "preventative" airstrike.



The BBC notes that "the revelations raise as many questions as they answer" - like where were the ancillary plants Syria would have needed to turn any fuel into a bomb...and come to that, where was the fuel?



The editors of National Review think they have the answers - North Korea was using Syria as a proxy location for its own nuclear weapons program. Fuel would have come from NK and gone back there for reprocessing. So the Syrians wouldn't have gotten a weapon from it after all? What was in it for them, then?



Moon of Alabama, however, has some grave doubts about the briefing itself. Another Powell-esque episode of "Slam-Dunk Pictures Presents?"



Cheryl Rofer, a nuclear and non-proliferation expert with years of experience in the field, has been analysing the photos and CGI from the briefing to Congress.



And lastly, over at The Arms Control Wonk, James Acton is wondering "why now?" For a probable answer to that, I'll refer him to the NRO article above and it's last line: "It�s time to admit the deal was a mistake and start rebuilding the consensus to sanction Kim Jong Il for his dangerous lies." It's what the Cheney/Bolton camp have been after all along and this was the right time to strike.



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