Ron Paul is “the best-known American propagandist for our enemies”, writes Dorothy Rabinowitz in a recent Wall Street Journal hit piece. To support the charge, she writes that Dr. Paul “assures audiences” that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 “took place only because of U.S. aggression and military actions”. It’s “True,”…
Ah, Thomas Friedman. You gotta love him. Here he is on December 20, 2011: With the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq, we’re finally going to get the answer to the core question about that country: Was Iraq the way Iraq was because Saddam was the way Saddam…
“Dammit, make a decision.” A Times editorial: President Obama is fulfilling his promise to wind down the Iraq war. When he took office, there were about 142,000 American troops on the ground; now there are 46,000. All are supposed to be gone by Dec. 31 under a 2008 agreement between…
FPJ — The New York Times this week reports under the headline “Taking Lead, Iraqis Hope U.S. Special Operations Commandos Stay” that the security situation in Iraq “may be at risk now that American forces are withdrawing this year” as per the U.S.-Iraqi Status of Force Agreement (SOFA). “Even as…
Foreign Policy Journal — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was at the very least informed in May 2003 by the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, that the Iraqi army would be disbanded, a decision that was instrumental in helping to spur the…
Despite the headlines, there is very little new information reported, and the evidence for the claims made is thin.…
Any attack on Iran would have dire consequences and enormously destabilize the Middle East.…
Iraq is back in the news, at least for a moment. The occasion is “A truly historic end to seven years of war”, in the words of Lt. Col Mark Beiger, quoted in the Washington Post, referring to the final withdrawal of “combat” troops from the country. It’s a cause…
Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage, a new book by Mike Otterman, Richard Hil, and Paul Wilson (available from the AET Book Club), sets out to deconstruct the narrative of the United States as the benign guardian of Iraqi interests by presenting an account of the tragedy of…
Look. It's not that difficult, okay? Point one: Politicians don't often say what they mean. Point two: Politicians don't often mean what they say. As corollary of the first two points, point three: Policy is rightly judged by deeds, not words.…
With the deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of next year creeping nearer, the U.S. has to find some way to convince the Iraqi government to allow a continued military presence, which is the likely outcome despite the U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement containing…
I keep seeing Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 used in arguments favoring the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. For example, from the Heritage Foundation just yesterday: In June 1981, Israel launched a successful air strike against Iraq’s Osiraq reactor and inflicted a major setback on the…
In a New York Times op-ed this week that advocates bombing Iran, the author, Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin, begins by suggesting that President Barack Obama should “sigh in relief that Iran has rejected his nuclear deal”. In…
With a general election in Iraq scheduled for January 2010, the U.S. is encouraging the Iraqi legislature to pass the requisite election law, while international oil corporations continue to compete for contracts to exploit Iraq’s natural energy resources. After a meeting at the White House on Tuesday with Iraqi Prime…
In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined the Obama administration’s foreign policy, which has been widely touted as a sharp break from that of his predecessor’s. Judging from commentary in the media, Obama has ushered in a new age…
The mainstream media is reporting that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein told his FBI interrogators after his capture that he lied about having weapons of mass destruction (WMD) because he feared Iran. But there’s just one problem with this claim: Saddam Hussein never claimed to have WMD, but , as…
Here’s an old one that’s been resurrected once more. The New York Daily News says that Saddam Hussein “bluffed” about having WMD in an article entitled, “Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein bluffed about WMDs fearing Iranian arsenal, secret FBI files show“: The FBI interrogations of the toppled tyrant – codename…
A spokesman for the Iraqi government said this week that the June 30 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from urban areas would not be extended. Although there has been some talk that U.S. forces might be asked to stay longer due to an increase in violence in some…
Notice and Correction: Inquiries sent to the FRBNY, the U.S. State Department, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR, Department of Defense), the U.N. International Advisory and Monitoring Board for Iraq (IAMB), the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Oil, were not returned before publication. The…
Both the Democratic and Republican U.S. presidential candidates have stated their intention to increase the military presence in Afghanistan should they win the election to become the country’s next Executive. As a recent article in the Washington Post observed, “The well-advertised differences between John McCain and Barack Obama on the war…
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