As President Obama gave a self-congratulatory speech about keeping his campaign promise to remove U.S. combat forces from Iraq by the end of August, he accomplished this feat by merely redefining the mission of the 50,000 combat-trained U.S. forces remaining there to...
Acts of Contrition
I hate it when I'm right, mostly because my predictions are invariably dark. We're lost, doomed, the end is near. It's always something. And while it may be in bad taste to say “I told you so,” I did indeed tell you so back in March of 2003, when the...
What Obama Should Have Said About Afghanistan
My Fellow Americans, … so much for Iraq. Turning now to Afghanistan, let me be clear. My learning curve has been steep, as the New York Times noted last weekend. The curve has also been jagged as I have tried to assimilate the not-always-consistent advice the...
Tuesday: 1 US Soldier, 4 Iraqis Killed; 7 Iraqis Wounded
Why Muqtada Haunts the White House
The Limits of Force as an Instrument of Foreign Policy
Despite their vast military and technological power, the United States and many of its allies have been bogged down for nearly 10 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. This failure of the U.S. and its allies to achieve their goals in these two countries raises the question...
The Dog Ate My Exit Timeline
Those poor Iraqi kids. Who's going to keep them supplied with new soccer balls after we leave? Will the poor things have to go back to eating Iraqi food after all the Hershey bars run out? (Cue Sally Struthers). And what will happen to all those adorable puppies...
FBI: No Probable Cause Required For Surveillance
The bitter controversy over the building of a Muslim community center and mosque near the site of the terrorist attacks in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, is sparking new fears of government snooping on Islamic holy places – which it now claims it can do without a...
Iraq: An End or an Escalation?
Listen to Rep. Ron Paul deliver this speech here. Amid much fanfare last week, the last supposed “combat” troops left Iraq as the administration touted the beginning of the end of the Iraq War and a change in the role of the United States in that country. Considering...
Media Didn’t Buy Story of Low Taliban Morale
In an effort to introduce a story of "progress" into media coverage, Gen. David Petraeus's command claimed last week that the Taliban is suffering from reduced morale in Marjah and elsewhere, despite evidence that the population of Marjah still believes the Taliban...


