FPJ — Matt Johnson really dislikes Ron Paul. Under the headline “The Rest of the World: Ron Paul Revelations” at PoliticalFiber.com, he writes: Last Wednesday, my editor published a disheartening reminder on this website: Ron Paul isn’t going away. After I...
Why do I punish myself by reading STRATFOR? On July 20, I posted a comment on Facebook: Any article that purports to explain Russia and China’s veto of the resolution on Syria that doesn’t contain the word “Libya” isn’t worth the paper...
Thomas L. Friedman. His idiocy is sometimes amusing, but other times, he displays a sociopathic tendency that is really not funny. His latest column is titled “Syria Is Iraq”, and is an example of the latter type. It is one of the most astoundingly incomprehensible,...
Harvey Morris posts a blog at the New York Times titled “The Unresolved Mystery of Syria’s ‘Iraqi’ Chemical Weapons”. Unresolved? Mystery? Morris comments: The existence of undeclared Iraqi W.M.Ds was President George W. Bush’s casus belli in 2003. The failure to find...
Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week with a headline asking “What Happened to Israel’s Reputation?” He repeats many of his standard hasbara, much of which I addressed in my article “Michael B. Oren’s Worship...
FPJ — Doug Wead, a senior advisor to the Ron Paul campaign, writes in his blog that Ron Paul was asked by evangelical leaders about moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “The real issue here is not what America wants but what Israel...
Steven Erlanger reports in the New York Times how the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—the U.S., Russia, China, France, and Britain—plus Germany) are in talks with Iran for the first time since January 2011. At those talks, Erlanger...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Under the headline “Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias”, the New York Times reports that documents from the Wikileaks Iraq War Logs “provide a ground-level look – at least as seen by American units in the field and the United...
The drums for war on Iran have been banging louder than ever lately, with a spate of articles by political commentators either directly encouraging the bombing of the Islamic Republic or otherwise offering a narrative in which this is effectively portrayed as the only...
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...
This article was originally published in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2010, pp. 43, 50. 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...
Steven Aftergood over at the Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) Secrecy News has gotten hold of the latest estimate of the cost of the so-called “war on terrorism” from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The CRS report states: Since the...
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 a corollary of the first two points, point three: Policy is rightly judged by deeds, not words....
Many analysts have postulated that President Obama’s canning of Gen. Stanley McChrystal was compelled in part by a desire within the administration to shift the Afghanistan policy. The Obama administration itself has denied that this is so, but I see a general...
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...