Sunday Roundup

This week, President Obama gave a well-received tough-love speech in Israel, Syria may or may not have used chemical weapons, and Cyprus was given until Monday to come up with a restructuring Plan B after its parliament rejected Plan A: a 10 percent "haircut" tax on bank deposits over $100,000. Even more suspect than the health of Cyprus' banks is the decision-making on how to save them. "Impressively stupid" is how Cyprus.com described the EU's ambush of newly-elected (and pro-EU) President Anastassiades with a plan that -- by grabbing insured deposits -- would damage bank confidence throughout the EU. How can leaders make decisions this "impressively stupid?" As Felix Salmon writes, it was a move "born of an unholy combination of procrastination, blackmail, and sleep-deprived gamesmanship." For proof that this kind of decision making isn't exclusive to Europe, this week was also the 10th anniversary of one of the most "impressively stupid" and profoundly tragic decisions in U.S. history: the invasion of Iraq.