EAST JERUSALEM – Palestinian politicians and Israeli political analysts are warning of a third Palestinian Intifadah following serious rioting in East Jerusalem last Sunday. Clashes broke out between Palestinians protesters and Israeli security forces after a group of extremist Israeli settlers, escorted by Israeli soldiers and police, tried to enter the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque, …
Continue reading “Riots May Point to Third Palestinian Uprising”
Conn Hallinan: was the bombing in Kunduz an election ploy?
Andy Worthington on the latest torture shocker
Philip Giraldi says the Iran hysteria is familiar
David Bromwich on war’s columnist
Updated at 4:25 p.m. EDT, Sept. 30, 2009
The Red Cross warned that considering a death toll of 500 Iraqis every month as being “normal” was overly complacent. Meanwhile, at least seven Iraqis were killed and another 10 were wounded in today’s attacks. Back in the U.S., Vice President Joseph Biden welcomed home his son who spent the last year deployed to Iraq. Also, a U.S. Marine apologized for killing an unarmed Iraqi during the 2004 battle for Fallujah.
There is no such thing a "victory" in the kinds of wars we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best one can hope for in these types of conflicts – counterinsurgency efforts in far-flung corners of the globe with fuzzy objectives and vague necessity – is to not be seen as having "lost." For that …
Continue reading “McChrystal’s Myth”
Empathy is a term that connotes the touchy-feely notion of getting in touch with someone else’s feelings or perspective. That’s what psychotherapists and social workers do. It obviously has no place in the hard-knocks world of foreign affairs and national security. Or does it? In world history, the best generals are experts in empathy. They …
Continue reading “Empathy for ‘Adversaries’”
Ron Rosenbaum, journalist (the New York Observer, Slate.com), author, and one of the few liberals to sign on to the ill-fated Pajamas Media fiasco, is damned mad: “Will all the pundits who relied on the discredited 2007 NIE on Iran now admit that they were wrong? That they bought into and kept citing, without any …
Continue reading “Our Intelligence, and Theirs”
The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a "secret" nuclear facility. But an analysis of the transcript of that briefing by senior administration officials that was the sole basis for the news stories …
Continue reading “US Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn’t Add Up” 
