Month: November 2008

The Obama-oids aren’t talking too much about foreign policy these days, although that was their candidate’s ticket to the White House. Iraq was the winning issue that gave Obama’s primary campaign the oomph it needed to oust the putative front-runner from her perch as the anointed one, but it fails to evoke the interest it … Continue reading “The Russian Question”

Updated at 7:55 p.m. EST, Nov. 9, 2008The Iraqi work week began with numerous attacks across the country. Unsurprisingly, Mosul took the brunt of the violence again, but bombers also attacked in Diyala, Anbar and Baghdad. Overall, at least 18 Iraqis were killed and 63 more were wounded. No Coalition deaths were reported. Meanwhile, Syrian … Continue reading “Sunday: 18 Iraqis Killed, 63 Wounded”

Updated at 9:51 p.m EST, Nov. 8, 2008At least 17 Iraqis were killed and another 28 were wounded in lighter violence today. One American soldier was killed and two more were wounded during a bombing in the capital. Surprisingly, Iraqi President Talabani and two VPs approved a minority rights bill that they and other critics … Continue reading “Saturday: 1 US Soldier, 17 Iraqis Killed; 28 Iraqis Wounded”

Quoth Barack Obama, then a candidate for the Presidency, way back in August of 2007: "I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance involving civilians.” Now that Obama is President-Elect, we all hope and pray that he more than thinks that nuking civilians would be a … Continue reading “Against Nuking Civilians”

After a week lecturing at Kansas State University and then in Kansas City, Missouri, I could not shake the feeling that what Kansas and Missouri need most is the equivalent of Radio Free Europe, which was so effective in spreading truth around inside Eastern Europe during the Cold War. (Truth in advertising: during the late … Continue reading “President-elect’s Queries to Briefers”

The media and the Washington foreign policy elite breathed a sigh of relief when Barack Obama thumped John McCain in the election. Had John McCain won, there was always the chance that the neoconservatives would have beaten out the Republican realists for his foreign policy soul. With a victory by the liberal Obama, however, the … Continue reading “Good Bye Neoconservatives. Hello to Their Liberal Brethren?”

(Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the book Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations, by Iraq Veterans Against the War and Aaron Glantz. For more about the Winter Soldier hearings, read this FPIF commentary by Glantz, an FPIF contributor. You can also watch Rosas’ testimony.) We occupied a local train … Continue reading “Winter Soldier: Domingo Rosas”

Updated at 5:27 p.m. EST, Nov. 7, 2008At least 10 Iraqis were killed and another 15 were wounded during light violence on the prayer day. Although there was a break in bombings today, officials are still concerned about the uptick in the use of “sticky bombs” during October. A U.S. solider died from non-combat related … Continue reading “Friday: 1 US Soldier, 10 Iraqis Killed; 15 Iraqis Wounded”

Despite the expenditure of nearly five billion dollars in US military, security, and economic assistance, the cultivation of coca leaf and production of cocaine in Colombia actually increased between 2000 and 2007, according to a major review by the US Congress’s independent investigative agency. In a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office … Continue reading “Coca Cultivation Up Despite Six Years of Plan Colombia”

Eight years ago George W. Bush was elected president after promising to implement a more "humble" foreign policy. He reacted against the Clinton administration’s preference to intervene militarily when there were no conceivable American interests at stake – Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo – and advocated a more traditional and limited U.S. role in the world. … Continue reading “The American People Render Their Electoral Judgment: Time to Finish Off the Neoconservatives”