Ibrahim Asiri, Rock Center and a nerd dream fulfilled

I encourage Waq al-waq’s readers to tune in to Rock Center with Brian Williams this evening at 10 pm EST for a segment on Ibrahim Asiri – who I wrote about here – and AQAP, in which I’ll be talking about the organization with NBC chief foreign correspondent and, as I found out, fluent Arabic speaker Richard Engel. 

There is a two-minute teaser clip in which I have – what is for me – some dramatic comments.  There is also a good behind-the-scenes post by the story’s producer Solly Granatstein.  You can watch and read here.

Earlier today I participated in a 30 minute discussion on Huffington Post Live with Jeremy Scahill, Joshua Foust, Naureen Shah and Heather Hurlburt.  The clip from that discussion is available here.

On Monday, The Last Refuge was officially launched at an event generously hosted by the Overseas Press club.  Many thanks to all the people who so kindly came out for drinks and Yemen talk. 

The next day I was in DC for an event hosted by the Brookings Institution and moderated by Dan Byman.  Ibrahim Sharqieh, who wrote this piece in the National, and I spent an hour-an-half discussing Yemen.

And it was here that my nerd dream came true.  A secret, but perhaps not unexpected dream for guy like myself – who loves BookTV and Washington Journal (even with the crazy callers) – is to appear on C-Span. It wasn’t until @Yousefkaid tweeted about it that I realized C-Span had been there and filmed the event. Nerd dream, fulfilled.  You can see the 90-minute all Yemen discussion here.