Con Coughlin, the British journalist perhaps best known in the States for his book Saddam: His Rise and Fall, used to be the executive editor of London’s Sunday Telegraph. Starting Thursday, he’s going to be the “defence and security” editor for the Daily Telegraph, taking the place of acclaimed military historian Sir John Keegan. He’s certainly got the experience for it: his forthcoming (January) book, American Ally, details how “Tony Blair’s staunch support for the United States since 9/11 has confirmed his position as one of the most important and controversial world leaders of the twenty-first century,” to quote the catalog description by Ecco (which is a division of HarperCollins, which is a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which might explain why supporting the United States “confirms” Blair’s importance, unlike all those irrelevant rulers of “Old Europe” ). And his last significant report for the Telegraph provided details on Iranian smuggling of weapons to Iraqi insurgents. No, wait, scratch that: Searching the Telegraph directly rather than through Google News reveals a story from earlier this week about Chechen rebels being trained in Iran.