It's time for one of Washington favorite parlor games -- predicting what the president will say before he says it.  What we know is that tomorrow President Obama will announce his plans for a troop reduction in Afghanistan. Thirty-three thousand surge troops were added in 2009, with the promise that by this summer they would begin to come home. But how many and how fast is still an open question.

Officially, the White House says the president is still "finalizing" his decision. And indeed, some of his key advisors reportedly disagree on what to do. Gen. David Petraeus-- the current Afghanistan commander who will soon take over the CIA -- and many of the generals are pushing for a pretty small initial withdrawal of no more than 3-4,000 troops. On the opposite extreme, some in the administration and outside want a far broader withdrawal. Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president's senior advisor on Afghanistan, advocates pulling 15,000 troops out by the end of the year and another 15,000 by the end of 2012, according to the New York Times. Carl Levin, the influential senator and chair of the armed services committee, backs that approach as well. Vice President Joe Biden -- who was a critic of the surge before it was cool -- reportedly wants all 30,000 surge troops gone within 12 months. Defense Secretary Bob Gates is pushing for something in the range of 5,000 troops -- a brigade -- this year and another 5,000 over the next winter, according to the Times.

Where will Obama come down?

The L.A. Times cites Pentagon and administration officials saying the reduction will be about 10,000 by the end of the year. If true, it would be a significant move by Obama. Petraeus has warned Obama that taking out that many troops that quickly "could create problems for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan" especially if other countries follow America's lead and begin withdrawing, the paper said.  But a faster withdrawal decision would seem to bolster the president politically at home. A recent NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll found that 54 percent of the country approves of Obama's handling of the war but are growing impatient with the decade-old conflict.

The Washington Post cites administration officials saying Obama will likely remove far fewer than 10,000 -- probably in the Pentagon-approved range of 3-5,000, though the officials warned that no final decision has been made.  Interestingly, according to the Post, the president had hoped to announce progress on another front at the same time as the troop withdrawal -- reconciliation talks with the Taliban. But those talks have stalled and there is political confusion over the U.S.'s partner in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, whose rhetoric has been growing more and more incendiary -- some would say unhinged -- of late.

The New York Times presents a third theory, attributed to an "official," that the president tomorrow might not give any specific withdrawal number. He might only announce a date for the final drawdown of all the surge troops sometime in 2012 -- but leave the timetable vague and rely on commanders in the field to make suggestions. This was the approach he used in Iraq. According to the Times, administration sources said the president would most likely pull out "the entire 30,000 troops by the end of 2012."

Since my write-up of Seymour Hersh's talk is getting some coverage today, and many commenters have written in to dispute my post, I thought I should provide a little more context.

More than a few readers, including Salon's Glenn Greenwald, complained that I hadn't rebutted Hersh's arguments. That wasn't my intention -- I was relaying what Hersh said. I did make two editorial comments: that his speech was a "rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe" and that it "quickly went downhill" after its opening line. But I imagine that when most reasonable people read the transcript -- I don't have a video, unfortunately -- they will see what I'm talking about. As far as I know, nobody, including Hersh, is disputing my quotes.

I thought it was self-evident that several points Hersh made were off-base and conspiratorial, but perhaps it's worth spelling things out for everyone.

1. The idea that "we're gonna change mosques into cathedrals" is "an attitude that pervades … a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command." This is essentially unverifiable unless you do a survey of JSOC personnel. Good luck with that. For now, the weight of evidence suggests that JSOC is on the whole a highly competent and professional organization that has no intention of converting Muslims to Christianity around the world. If it were otherwise, I'm sure we'd be hearing about it from others besides Seymour Hersh.

2. Retired General Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.… Many of them are members of Opus Dei." McChrystal has already denied being a member of Knights of Malta; McRaven and JSOC have thus far declined to comment. But so what if they were? Everything I've seen tells me that the Knights of Malta are a public service organization, not some kind of Catholic extremist group. And Opus Dei is hardly the secretive cabal of ruthless assassins depicted in The Da Vinci Code. It has a Facebook page.

3. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function." I have no doubt that many in the U.S. military are religious, and yes, I've heard about Jerry Boykin, Erik Prince, and those rifle scopes. But the plural of anecdote is not data -- and acknowledging there are devout Christians in the military and implying that top military leaders are embarking on a "crusade" against Muslims are two very different things. "Zealotry is viewed as being unprofessional [in the SF community]," former Special Forces officer Kalev Sepp told Stars and Stripes. "Anyone who professes religion in an open way like that is suspect to where their real loyalties lie." (Do I really need to explain this?)

4. "They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins.… They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war." I believe Hersh is referring here to challenge coins, a common sight across the U.S. military. They seem pretty innocuous to me.

There's a lot more, but you get the idea. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say it: Odds are good that JSOC is not being overrun by Catholic fanatics.

As the debate over "don't ask, don't tell" rages on in the United States, it seems Turkey is also facing its own domestic dilemma over military participation.

While gays are barred from military service in Turkey, the armed forces allegedly are "asking for 'photographic' proof  that people seeking an exemption from compulsory military service on the grounds of their homosexuality are actually gay," Hurriyet reports.

The practice is not official, and the military has firmly denied the claims but there have been consistent accusations from Turks who were allegedly subject to the practice, and the 2009 European Union progress report also cited concerns over the issue.

Turkey's dilemma is not so much "don't ask, don't tell," -- it's more over "show and tell."

Barack Obama's White House aides have been furiously spinning Bob Woodward's new book as one that paints a positive image of the president, a wartime leader making touch decisions in the interest of the American people.

Some may see that image in Woodward's first of three adaptations of the book, published in today's Washington Post. But once could also see a president who doesn't trust his military advisors and treats them a little bit like the help. Consider this anecdote about the Afghan strategy review:

He was looking for choices that would limit U.S. involvement and provide a way out. His top three military advisers were unrelenting advocates for 40,000 more troops and an expanded mission that seemed to have no clear end. When his national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2009, for its eighth strategy review session, the president erupted.

"So what's my option? You have given me one option," Obama said, directly challenging the military leadership at the table, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command.

"We were going to meet here today to talk about three options," Obama said sternly. "You agreed to go back and work those up."

Mullen protested. "I think what we've tried to do here is present a range of options."

Obama begged to differ. Two weren't even close to feasible, they all had acknowledged; the other two were variations on the 40,000.

Silence descended on the room. Finally, Mullen said, "Well, yes, sir."

Later on, we find Obama telling Gates that 30,000 more troops was his final answer:

"I've got a request for 4,500 enablers sitting on my desk," Gates said. "And I'd like to have another 10 percent that I can send in, enablers or forces, if I need them."

"Bob," Obama said, "30,000 plus 4,500 plus 10 percent of 30,000 is" - he had already done the math - "37,500." Sounding like an auctioneer, he added, "I'm at 30,000."

Obama had never been quite so definitive or abrupt with Gates.

"I will give you some latitude within your 10 percentage points," Obama said, but under exceptional circumstances only.

"Can you support this?" Obama asked Gates. "Because if the answer is no, I understand it and I'll be happy to just authorize another 10,000 troops, and we can continue to go as we are and train the Afghan national force and just hope for the best."

"Hope for the best." The condescending words hung in the air.

So which is it? Tough commander in chief or insecure armchair general? I suspect this will be a question for history to answer.

Bob Woodward's new book about Barack Obama's presidency promises to create enormous headaches for a White House that's already reeling from a weak economic recovery and a surging Republican opposition, judging by accounts in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The accounts paint a portrait of a president sharply at odds with the military and deeply ambivalent about the war in Afghanistan. And they rip the veneer off an administration that had hitherto been known for its tight message discipline and a relative lack of infighting.

If you thought the Rolling Stone article that got Gen. Stanley McChrystal fired was damning, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Get a load of some of these nuggets:

• Neither Richard Holbrooke, the special advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan, nor retired Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, the White House "war czar," believe in the current U.S. war strategy. Woodward quotes Holbrooke saying flatly "it can't work"; Lute apparently said that the Afghan strategy review didn't "add up" to the course the president ultimately chose.  For his part, Vice President Joe Biden is quoted calling Holbrooke "the most egotistical bastard I've ever met."
• Afghan President Hamid Karzai has apparently been diagnosed with manic depression and is treating his condition with drugs (though perhaps not opium, as suggested some months back by the ousted U.N. diplomat Peter Galbraith). Woodward quotes Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador, as saying, "He's on his meds, he's off his meds." That'll go over well in Kabul.
• Axelrod apparently asked Obama, "How could you trust Hillary?" when Clinton was being considered to be secretary of state.
• In comments that fall into the category of "true but not a good idea to say," Obama tells Woodward, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger."
• Plenty of people have the knives out for national security advisor Jim Jones, who in turn rips  unnamed presidential aides as "the water bugs," "the Politburo," "the Mafia," and "the campaign set." I'm not sure what he means by this or to whom he's referring, but I have some educated guesses.
• Defense Secretary Bob Gates apparently doesn't like Jones's deputy, Tom Donilon, and thinks he would be a "disaster" as national security advisor. Gates was offended by a remark Donilon made about a general who isn't named in the book. Meanwhile, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright don't trust one other -- Cartwright worked closely with Biden on a proposal for a smaller Afghan surge force than was ultimately chosen.
• Gen. David Petraeus, the man now charged with saving Obama's ass in Afghanistan, thinks White House advisor David Axelrod is "a complete spin doctor." Petraeus also told his aides in May that the administration was "[expletive] with the wrong guy," though it's not clear what the context was.

The most explosive revelations, however, center around the Obama's decision last year to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan but set a controversial July 2011 timeline for beginning to withdraw -- an awkward compromise that Woodward's sources seem eager to portray as very much the president's own. And Bob's got the goods: Obama, who comes across as deeply skeptical about the war and overwhelmingly concerned with finding an "exit strategy" rather than winning, personally dictated a six-page "terms sheet" outlining the conditions under which he was sending the troops. Woodward describes a tense Nov. 29, 2009, meeting where the president demanded that each participant read it and raise any objections "now." According to the Post, "The document -- a copy of which is reprinted in the book -- took the unusual step of stating, along with the strategy's objectives, what the military was not supposed to do."

As Woodward describes it,  the memo represented Obama's attempt to keep the military from boxing him in and pushing to escalate the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan (a storyline we've heard before, though with fewer details). At one point, Woodward says, Obama told military leaders, "In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, 'We're doing fine, Mr. President, but we'd be better if we just do more.' We're not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] ... unless we're talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011." It's not clear just who's boxing in whom at the moment, though. The Post remarks on the irony that Petraeus has been tasked with implementing a strategy with which he clearly does not fully agree, but the general has been pretty savvy about thus far about establishing that the withdrawals will be "conditions-based."

Obama told Gates and Clinton at another meeting that he didn't want to stay in Afghanistan for a decade: "I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars." He also made a similar remark to Lindsey Graham, telling the South Carolina senator, "I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party."

Republicans are going to have a field day with this one.

In an inspired bit of YouTube surfing, Gawker has assembled a compilation of military recruitment commercials from around the world. There are a few clunkers -- three minutes is an awful long time to watch a Russian paratrooper sort of rapping in front of an obstacle course -- and I have my doubts that this Japanese ad is not an elaborate sophomoric hoax, but on the whole they make for pretty fascinating viewing.

Watching these as an American, the most immediately noticeable thing is how little time most of the ads spend overtly appealing to patriotism. There's Estonia, which does it cheekily, and Lebanon, which does it with a slow-motion sentimentality that would be cloying under other circumstances but is actually quite poignant in the context of a country that is eternally trying to keep things together. France and India, meanwhile, both hearken back to the U.S. military ads of the pre-9/11 era, in which we mostly see the life-advancing stuff that enlistment is supposed to get you, with a minimum of actual warfighting. (A career in the Indian army evidently prepares you for a lifetime of golfing and competitive diving.)

The Ukrainian army opts for an admirably straightforward "you'll get girls" approach. Singapore features a naval vessel transforming into a giant robot, presumably developed to contain the same giant lava monsters that have long plagued the U.S. Marines. Britain's jarring entry -- which a student of post-colonialism would have a field day with -- looks like it was directed by Fernando Meirelles. (This kind of "I dare you" approach to recruiting must work in the U.K. -- back in the '90s, when the U.S. Army was mostly promoting itself as a way to pay for college, the Brits ran magazine ads showing a Royal Marine eating worms as part of a survival training course.)

But the real winner here, I think, is Sweden, which is promoting military service to young women as a means of avoiding working as an au pair for awful Americans:

Colombia's top court may have just put new President Juan Manuel Santos in something of a tough spot:

The Colombian constitutional court ruled yesterday that last year's agreement giving the US military access to more bases in the country is unconstitutional because it was not approved by legislators.

The court's decision, reached by a 6-3 majority, said however that the ruling does not affect US military personnel and contractors working from Colombian bases covered by earlier accords.

This means any US personnel at the seven bases included in the 2009 pact could shift to bases permitted by previous agreements while the government decides whether to put the latest accord before congress, where new President Juan Manuel Santos has a big majority.

Santos has defended the deal, which was inked by his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, but has also made a point early in his presidency of trying to improve relations with neighboring Venezuela, which is strongly opposed to the construction of a new U.S. base in Colombia.

While Santos may be able to get the agreement through congress easily, doing so will require him to take political ownership of the issue and force him to choose between increasing tensions with Venezuela just when they were starting to ease and offending Colombia's longtime backers in Washington.

Responding to Jacob Weisberg's mournful re-evaluation of Sen. John McCain, Matthew Yglesias writes: 

I feel like some of the media’s John McCain fanboys should give more consideration to the idea that less here has changed than they think, and they themselves just shouldn’t have been so eager to embrace McCain in the first place. McCain is still a fanatical warmonger who believes in maximal application of military force in all circumstances, a kind of mirror-image Quaker. That his cartoonish worldview has ever been taken seriously tells you a lot about how deep in the grips of militarism Washington, DC is.

I'm not sure what timeframe Yglesias is considering but it's not true that McCain never met a war he didn't like. McCain's early career in congress was actually more defined by opposition to the use of military force.  In 1983, as a freshman congressman, McCain broke with President Reagan and most congressional Republicans to oppose the redeployment of U.S. troops in Lebanon. Regarding what came to be known as Operation Desert Storm, he told the New York Times in 1990:

''If you get involved in a major ground war in the Saudi desert, I think support will erode significantly. Nor should it be supported. We cannot even contemplate, in my view, trading American blood for Iraqi blood.'' 

He also opposed U.S. military operations in Somalia, Haiti, and (initially) Bosnia. From Kosovo on, and certainly after 9/11, McCain has been far more hawkish. But at the time of the 2000 election, when the "fanboys" first acquired their McCain infatuation, the senator actually had a fairly mixed record on military force.     

What do you call a political rally where citizens-turned-automatons stand silent and unmoving without signs, literature, or adornment of any kind?  No real political rally at all -- or, permissible dissent in Burma.

The iron-fisted Burmese junta -- led by military general Than Shwe -- has repeatedly framed this year's upcoming elections as fair and democratic, dismissing the critics who claim it is merely a design to cement five decades of uninterrupted military rule. But the despotic regime's recent ban on essentially any public, recognizable political expression -- on marching, chanting, making speeches, brandishing flags, distributing publications, or making disturbances near any offices, factories, markets, schools, hospitals, and religious meetings (read: anywhere on solid ground) -- likely won't win over any disbelievers.

Today the ruling junta published a 14-point directive in state-run newspapers to explain what constitutes a recognized party and exactly what that party can -- or much more thoroughly, can not -- do. To attain party status, a group must be registered by the (state-run) Election Commission and then amass a minimum of 1,000 members in the three following months. To hold a rally, the party must be approved and then must obtain permission to hold the rally from that same committee. It is worth noting first that the majority of the 38 currently registered groups (a mere sixth of the number registered in the most recent election … back in 1990) support the ruling party; second, that campaigning comes with its own laundry list of restrictions; and third, that any participants in a political rally must adhere to the aforementioned restrictions or face a crackdown from local authorities. The end result? Any political body espousing real opposition is unlikely to materialize, and any political rally is whittled down to what most closely resembles a silent rave -- minus the headphones and the fun. 

The other conditions of the elections only make prospects grimmer: No election date has been specified, over 2,000 "political prisoners" are barred from the voting booths, and what is arguably the only party capable of posing a real challenge to the junta, the National League for Democracy, is effectively defunct.  The party's leader and rightful winner of the last Burmese elections, Aung San Suu Kyi, is most likely skeptical as she awaits the arrival of this elusive election -- all from the decrepit lake house where she remains under a 20-year-long house arrest.

Amid all the chatter about whether Stan McChrystal should keep his job, one storyline in the Rolling Stone article is getting lost: the doubts many U.S. soldiers have about counterinsurgency doctrine:

[H]owever strategic they may be, McChrystal's new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger. "Bottom line?" says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers' lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing." 

Michael Hastings, the author, is clearly a skeptic -- a COINhata, if you will. He does little to present McChrystal's side of the argument, or any evidence that his strategy could be working. Admittedly, there isn't much evidence at this point. CFR's Stephen Biddle made a smart comment about this last week:

We're at one of those moments where it's very hard to tell whether things are going well or badly. Counterinsurgency always has this "darkest before the dawn" quality.  When you start with a tough situation, you introduce reinforcements and you begin to contest insurgent control of population areas they now control, violence then rises. Enemy causalities go up, causalities to your own forces rise, casualties to civilians increase, general mayhem rises. If you succeed, you gain political control of these populations and violence eventually comes down. From an early increase in violence, you can't deduce that you're winning or that you're losing because you would see exactly the same thing either way at this point in the war.

That was true enough in Iraq; the surge looked to many like it wasn't working well into the summer of 2007. But I wonder if Afghanistan is really a comparable situation. It's a much more fragmented country, where trends in one area don't necessarily spill over into other places. Tribal leaders don't have the same ability to bring their communities along, especially as years of war and Taliban rule have undermined the authority of tribal elders. So it's hard to imagine the same kind of "awakening" spreading rapidly across the country. This is going to be a slog, valley by valley, village by village.

The thing is, though, it's not as if there is a viable alternative strategy out there. For years, the U.S. more or less tried Vice President Joe Biden's preferred approach of keeping a light footprint and limiting U.S. military operations to going after bad guys, while de-emphasizing nation building. That didn't work either. So I think it's worth giving COIN more time to succeed, whether or not McChrystal is the man implementing it.

Which raises another question about the general's leadership in Afghanistan. As any COIN expert will tell you, theory is one thing; implementation is quite another. What made General Petraeus so effective in Iraq was that he was brilliant at operationalizing COIN concepts and ensuring that everyone down the chain of command was carrying them out properly. Is McChrystal doing that effectively? I have my doubts. He certainly isn't following the COIN dictum that "unity of effort" is paramount -- he and Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, can't seem to get along; nor can Eikenberry get along with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. If winning a counterinsurgency war is mainly a political effort, what does it tell you if the politics guy isn't even in the game?

You may have heard by now that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, inexplicably gave Rolling Stone unparalleled access to his inner circle, and the magazine dropped a bomb on him today, feeding reporters a story that finds him dissing Ambassador Karl Eikenberry on the record and quotes his aides mocking Vice President Joe Biden, special representative Richard Holbrooke, and National Security Advisor Jim Jones. We also learn that McChrystal was none too impressed when he met President Barack Obama for the first time last year.

As you might imagine, folks in Washington are not pleased. "Within hours after today's Rolling Stone story broke," reports the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, "McChrystal was called by the White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were not happy."

No kidding.

Here's McChrystal's statement:

I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity.  What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard.  I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian leaders and troops fighting this war and I remain committed to ensuring its successful outcome."

Too late? It's hard to imagine how McChrystal survives what is going to be an epic sh*tstorm all week long. And then the article itself goes up Friday.

As James Dobbins noted last fall in a prescient article for FP, the disagreements between McChrystal and Eikenberry have been unusually public, to the long-term detriment of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. But I wonder why Eikenberry was able to stick around so long. After all, he clearly didn't believe in the mission, as his leaked memos made clear. And those memos made it impossible for him to get along with Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai -- which is one of the main jobs of an ambassador. How could he possibly be effective?

South Korea plans, on Thursday, to disclose the official results of its investigation into the sinking of the Navy frigate Cheonan, but the government seems to be gradually rolling out its findings.  Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told assembled diplomats at an EU Chamber of Commerce luncheon that "it's obvious" that North Korea was behind the explosion that sank the ship. Later today, a senior South Korea official gave the Korea Times previewed some of the evidence: 

Characters and numbers in North Korean fonts were found on fragments of what is believed to be a propeller blade from a torpedo that sank a South Korean frigate, a senior Defense Ministry official told The Korea Times, Wednesday.

"They were not Chinese characters or a serial number, but it was obvious that the lettering was North Korean," the official said on condition of anonymity regarding findings from a multinational investigation into the cause of the sinking of the ROK Navy's patrol boat Cheonan near the West Sea border with North Korea on March 26. [...]

The official said the torpedo in question was powered by two sets of propellers that rotate in opposite directions. He added that investigators conducted a computerized simulation and reached the conclusion that a 250kg, mid-sized sonar-tracking torpedo exploded underneath the gas turbine room of the 1,200-ton vessel.

The gas turbine has been found on the seabed and will be hoisted out of the water, according to the officials. Traces of explosives from the wreckage were also found to be similar to those from a North Korean torpedo found in the West Sea seven years ago, they said.  

South Korea has certainly taken its time before making a formal accusation over the incident. The ball's in Beijing's court now.  

Greece's new austerity measures, which will include cuts in public sector salaries, pensions, as well as tax increases, have provoked widespread, and occasionally violent, protests. But the country's military is taking a big hit as well: 

Defense Minister Evangelos Venizelos Greece is aiming to slash operating costs by up to 25 percent in 2010 from 2009, instead of the planned reduction of 12.6 percent listed in this year's budget.

"That is a colossal amount, reaching the margin of our operating needs," Venizelos said, insisting that the cuts were not a direct result of the Greek debt crisis, nor would affect the strategic balance with historic rival Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to visit Athens next month.

Strangely, Venizelos says the cuts are not a response to the financial crisis, but are "mandated by the modern views of military planning." Not really sure what school of military planning mandates a 25 percent lower budget, but okay.

Greece currently has 15 troops stationed in Afghanistan.  

Think mustard gas is bad?

In possible contravention of long-standing international conventions on the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons, the Indian military has announced the addition to a new weapon to its arsenal: chili grenades.

Made from bhut jolokia -- the spiciest chili pepper in the world, according to the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records -- the grenades are expected to be "effective nontoxic weapon[s]... [whose] pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hideouts."

I urge readers to be on the lookout for one of these things at the next international weapons exhibition they attend.