Asawin Suebsaeng

Editorial Fellow

Asawin Suebsaeng is an editorial fellow at the Washington, DC bureau of Mother Jones. He has also written for The American Prospect, the Bangkok Post, and Shoecomics.com.

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A recent graduate of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., Asawin came back to DC with hopes of putting his flimsy Creative Writing major, student newspaper tenure, and interest in human rights and political chicanery to some use. He started cutting his teeth at F&M's student-run weekly, The College Reporter, serving as editor in chief. He has interned at The American Prospect, been a reporter for the Bangkok Post, and scribbled for ShoeComics.com. His favorite movie is either Apocalypse Now or Pirahna 3D, depending on the day or mood.

Chart: Iran Easily Tops America's "Enemies" List

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Feb. 22, 2012 10:45 AM PST

Aris Katsaris/Wikimedia Commons

After conducting a poll over the course of four days in early February, with a random sample of 1,029 adults from all around the United States, the Gallup Poll has determined Americans are still freaking out over Iran.

In Gallup's annual World Affairs poll, respondents were asked to pick "the country they consider to be the United States' greatest enemy." Topping the list was Iran (32 percent of those surveyed nominated the Islamic Republic), followed by China (23 percent) and North Korea (10 percent). None of the other nations on this edition of America's enemies list crack the double digits. Here's the full chart, courtesy of Gallup Politics:

Iran's threat level jumped seven percentage points since early 2011. And as Gallup notes, the Iranian regime has enjoyed its top boogeyman status for a few years running:

The contour of responses to this "greatest enemy" question has changed substantially over the seven times Gallup has asked it since 2001. Americans most frequently mentioned Iraq as the United States' greatest enemy in 2001 -- before the U.S. invaded the country and removed Saddam Hussein from power -- and in 2005, when it tied North Korea. Iran has topped the list in each of the five surveys since.

At this point, it would be odd if Iran hadn't claimed the #1 spot. High-ranking officials in Tehran routinely make grandiose but empty statements threatening large-scale ground assaults on Western territories. Iran's nuclear program—and a potential Israeli airstrike—is the hot-button foreign policy issue of the year. Most of the Republican presidential candidates—when they're not riffing on urgent foreign policy matters like stemming the tide of Hezbollah colonization in Latin America or attacking Castro—frequently reach for "Bomb Iran!"-type rhetoric. American media has been abuzz with talk of war—some coverage has been measured and levelheaded, and some, well, not so much. And the whole covert-war-with-Iran thing hasn't exactly helped to ease tensions.

Justified or not, it isn't hard to grasp why Americans are pissed off at the Iranian government these days. What is difficult to understand is how Japan got voted on to this list.....just a single percentage point shy of Russia and Pakistan.

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Rick Santorum or Satanic Heavy Metal: The Quiz

Can you tell the difference between Santorum quotes and Megadeth lyrics? Nope, you probably can't.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Feb. 22, 2012 3:00 AM PST

heavy metal Santorum: Photo illustration by Dave Gilson Houses of the Holy: Rick Santorum rocks out. On his rise to the top of the Republican charts, Rick Santorum has picked up plugs and plaudits from media and entertainment luminaries including Glenn Beck, the Duggars, Pat Boone, and Dave Mustaine. Wait, what? Dave Mustaine? The heavy-metal ex-warlock is an admirer of Rick Santorum?

In a recent interview with MusicRadar, Mustaine—the Megadeth frontman, former Metallica guitarist, and pillar of the 1980s thrash metal movement—said that Santorum possesses some truly presidential qualities:

Earlier in the election…when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn't gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney's done against Newt Gingrich…I'm hoping that if it does come down to it, we'll see a Republican in the White House…and that it's Rick Santorum.

When you consider the contrast between the Christian right and—oh, you know—the satanic symbolism and violent sexuality associated with heavy-metal music, Mustaine's pseudo-endorsement* might seem born out of a slight cognitive dissonance. But when you think about it more, is there really anything more metal than a guy who talks obsessively about sex, the devil, and the imminent destruction of all that is sacred and holy?

Take our short quiz to find out if you can tell the difference between Rick Santorum quotes and things Dave Mustaine has said and sung. Share your score in the comments. (We've heard that some Chrome users are having technical difficulties with the quiz. We're working on it. In the meantime, please use another browser.)

* For the record, Mustaine used to support Democrats. He has previously expressed admiration for JFK and Bill Clinton, and was also harshly critical of the Reagan administration. So basically, Dave Mustaine is the Zell Miller of heavy metal.

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons (Santorum, heavy metal dude, pentagram), Mr Theklan/Flickr (fire)

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for February 22, 2012

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Feb. 22, 2012 2:57 AM PST

Col. Joseph Wawro and Command Sgt. Maj. Wylie Hutchison, the commander and senior noncommissioned officer of the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Dragon Brigade), 1st Infantry Division, visit with soldiers of Company A., 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 4IBCT , during a training mission at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif., on February 14, 2012. The Dragon Brigade is preparing for their deployment to Afghanistan later this year. (US Army photo by Staff Sgt. Tiffany Monnett, 4IBCT PAO)

New Report Slams Justice Department Transparency, Goes Easy on Obama

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Feb. 17, 2012 7:01 AM PST

Shh! Top secret. (cup)cake_eater/Flickr

Each year, the National Security Archive at George Washington University announces its Rosemary Award, given to the government agency that is deemed the most abysmal at transparency and "open government performance"—think of it as the RAZZIE Awards, but for FOIA and NatSec nerds.

And the watchdog group's 2011 Rosemary goes to (drum roll, please...) the Department of Justice, narrowly beating out the Department of Homeland Security, two senior CIA officials, CENTCOM, and the US Agency for International Development.

The Archive's report lists the following indictments:

selective and abusive prosecutions using espionage laws against whistleblowers as ostensible "leakers" of classified information, with more "leaks" prosecutions in the last three years than all previous years combined, at a time when expert estimates of over-classification range from 50 to 90%;

persisting recycled legal arguments for greater secrecy throughout Justice's litigation posture, including specious arguments before the Supreme Court in 2011 in direct contradiction to President Obama's "presumption of openness";

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

"This Means War": A Lazy, (Vaguely) Pro-Patriot Act Bore

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Feb. 17, 2012 3:00 AM PST

A delectable post-chase sequence Reese-Witherspoon-sandwich in "This Means War" (2012).: Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox A delectable post-gunfight Witherspoon-sandwich in This Means War (2012).

Photo courtesy of 20th Century FoxThis Means War
20th Century Fox
98 minutes

After sitting through This Means War, you will probably feel like someone hit you with a large truck, and then forced you to eat the truck: mentally reeling, bilious, and more than a little mad at the world.

This latest romantic comedy with guns works off a popcorn plot cobbled together from the scraps of other big-budget fluff: A pair of young and debonair CIA operatives are at the top of their globetrotting, terrorist-neutralizing game. There's FDR (played by Chris Pine), the kind of 21st-century spook who spends almost as much time clubbing as he does womanizing. And then there's Tuck (Tom Hardy), his British-American partner who serves as the emotionally mature foil. On top of that, the two are best friends—you might even say that they're bromantically inseparable.

And, sometime between all the overseas terrorist-killing and looking enviably chiseled, the two agents start falling for the same woman: a consumer-products tester and Georgia native named Lauren Scott (a vivacious Reese Witherspoon). FYI, she doesn't know that her suitors are secret agents, or that they're best buds. So begins the personal "war" between two spies, replete with elaborate pranks and borderline-psychotic acts of sabotage.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

5 Things You Might Have Missed in Obama's Proposed 2013 Budget

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue Feb. 14, 2012 3:41 PM PST

The federal chopping block, 2013 B.gliwa/Wikimedia Commons

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the White House gifted to Congress the president's proposed budget for the 2013 fiscal year. President Obama has been pretty clear that the budget is also meant to draw a stark contrast between him and the Republican opposition. Conservative pundits and politicos have been equally clear that they intend to use the proposed budget as more proof that Obama is a die-hard economy wrecker.

There are plenty of hot-button items sure to provide much grist for the attack-ad-mill as November approaches: Taxing the rich, trimming military spending, cutting spending on some federal health programs, and so forth.

Here are a few things you might have missed about the 2013 budget released on Monday:

1. Arab Spring nations get modest earmarks: The Obama administration wants to allot $800 million in economic aid to certain countries affected by Arab Spring uprisings. State Department officials told Reuters that the bulk of the sum would go to "initiatives [supporting] long-term economic, political, and trade reforms for countries in transition such as Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen."

Of that amount, $770 million would be set aside for creating the "Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund," which would provide aid to governments "prepared to make reforms proactively," the budget document notes.

Republican lawmakers like Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the leading GOPer on the Senate budget committee, is skeptical for all the expected reasons:

First, I'm not sure who'll we'll be negotiating with, and who you could give the money to. And there seems to be some awfully extreme views within the Arab Spring movement. I think we have to be very careful that any money we provide would be well spent.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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Denzel Washington Shackled in "Safe House" of Clichés

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Feb. 10, 2012 3:00 AM PST

Denzel Washington in "Safe House" (2012). Screenshot: SafeHousetheMovie/YouTube

Safe House
Universal Pictures
115 minutes

Let me start by saying how relieved I am to see a Denzel Washington action film that has nothing to do with imperiled trains and wasn't directed by Tony Scott. It was also nice to see Washington play another charismatic, streetwise ass-kicker who gets his jollies up bullying a white-boy rookie—a formula Washington hasn't worked so well since 2001's Training Day.

That said, Safe House is a glut of miserably squandered opportunities.

Washington stars as Tobin Frost, a former high-ranking CIA official now wanted on four continents for selling agency secrets to Iran, China, Russia, and so forth. Just how badass is this character? We learn early on that he "literally rewrote the book" on CIA interrogation and personally convinced a top Hezbollah leader to become an informant during the Lebanese Civil War. Anyway, after finally falling into US custody, Frost is rushed to a black site in Cape Town, where relative newbie Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is waiting as a CIA "housesitter"—a job marked by long hours, crushing idleness, and, as one minor character puts it, "appalling remuneration."

Shortly after Weston's superiors begin waterboarding Frost, a gang of nameless thugs flourishing automatic weapons bust into the safe house, presumably to extract the high-value detainee alive. Suddenly, Weston and Frost are off on a mad dash to the next secure location, racing through the busy streets and shanty towns of South Africa in a blitz of gunfire, civilian casualties, and crashed getaway cars.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

Al Qaeda and The Whales

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu Feb. 9, 2012 4:57 AM PST

Be nice to whales. Or this will happen to you, your friends, and all your loved ones. Brent Nelson/Flickr

Did whales benefit from the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Turns out that question isn't as boneheaded as it sounds.

In July 2001, scientists from the New England Aquarium began a study of right whales in the Bay of Fundy in the Gulf of Maine, testing whale excrement for "hormone-related chemicals" that indicated the animals' stress levels. And when the September 11 attacks happened, a window of opportunity was suddenly open for examining whether sound pollution was a major cause of stress for these whales.

AFP has the story:

The steady drone of motors along busy commercial shipping lanes not only alters whale behaviour but can affect the giant sea mammals physically by causing chronic stress, a study published Wednesday has reported for the first time.

The findings were made possible, researchers said, by an event that at first glance seems far removed from the plight of cetaceans: the attacks on New York's Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Only a catastrophe of that magnitude, they explained, could have caused maritime traffic to suddenly drop off, making it possible to measure the impact of varying levels of sound pollution in the sea.

Over the last 50 years noise caused by cargo and military vessels, along with high-decibel sonars used for oil exploration, has gradually increased in intensity and scope. Baleen whales communicate at the same low-frequency wavelengths emitted by these ships, in the range of 20 to 200 hertz (Hz), and some species have adapted by emitting louder and more frequent acoustic signals.

Fascinating stuff.

State Department Preparing To Cut Iraq Embassy Staff By Half

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue Feb. 7, 2012 2:10 PM PST

Google Maps

When the Iraq War officially ended late last year, many were quick to point out it was hardly a wholesale withdrawal. There are still 5,500 armed contractors stationed in Iraq to protect US government personnel (a figure nearly three times the number of hired guns the State Department uses to protect all its other diplomatic missions combined). A small (and controversial) fleet of surveillance drones are patrolling Iraqi skies. Oh, there's also that huge embassy complex in Baghdad that was recently on track to balloon to an even greater size.

But as Tim Arango of the New York Times reported on Tuesday, the State Department might end up nixing as much as half of the 16,000-strong embassy staff:

The expansive diplomatic operation and the $750 million embassy building, the largest of its kind in the world, were billed as necessary to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relations between two countries linked by blood and mutual suspicion. But the Americans have been frustrated by Iraqi obstructionism and are now largely confined to the embassy because of security concerns, unable to interact enough with ordinary Iraqis to justify the $6 billion annual price tag. ...

Michael W. McClellan, the spokesman for the embassy...said in a statement, "over the last year and continuing this year the Department of State and the Embassy in Baghdad have been considering ways to appropriately reduce the size of the U.S. mission in Iraq, primarily by decreasing the number of contractors needed to support the embassy's operations."...McClellan said the number of diplomats—currently about 2,000—is also, "subject to adjustment as appropriate." To make the cuts, he said the embassy, "is hiring Iraqi staff and sourcing more goods and services to the local economy."

For years, State Department officials have been pushing for substantial cuts in diplomatic operations to accomodate the reduced American role in Iraq. Budgetary realities, the scrapped plans for a residual force of American troops, and animosity between Iraqis and the security contractors have also contributed to the growing downsize-fever.

Also buried in the Times story is this glorious nugget about a major "difficulty" facing the thousands of contractors and diplomats who remained in Iraq after the December drawdown:

Convoys of food that were previously escorted by the United States military from Kuwait were delayed at border crossings as Iraqis demanded documentation that the Americans were unaccustomed to providing. Within days, the salad bar at the embassy dining hall ran low. Sometimes there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. On chicken wing night, wings were rationed at six per person. Over the holidays, housing units were stocked with Meals Ready to Eat, the prepared food for soldiers in the field.

Uh.... I'll just let Andrew Exum bring this one home:

Sometimes, when I was stuck on some godforsaken mountain in eastern Afghanistan, there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. Or coffee.
— Andrew Exum (@abumuqawama) February 7, 2012

Newt or Schrute: the Quiz

Can you tell the difference between Dwight Schrute and Newt Gingrich? No, you probably can't.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue Feb. 7, 2012 3:00 AM PST

One of these is Newt Gingrich. Or maybe both. We just don't know.

In case you haven't heard, in his younger days former House Speaker Newt Gingrich looked an awful lot like Dwight Schrute*.

But the eerie similarities surely end there, right? I mean, one of them is mercurial, despised by his colleagues, in love with animals, obsessed with pop culture mythology and modern warfare, and wrapped up in an endless subplot involving a blonde love interest.

And the other one is Dwight Schrute.

Take this short Mother Jones quiz to find out if you can tell the difference between Newton Leroy Gingrich and Dwight Kurt Schrute III. Update (4pm EST on Feb. 8): After a total of 13,000 plays, the average score hovers at 45% accuracy. (Question #9 is the real stumper.) Did you do any better?

[Read the full article]