Month: February 2009

BAGHDAD – After strong polling for the provincial elections Saturday, Iraqis are looking out for new signposts of political recovery from the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. Polling picked up after a slow start Saturday in the 14 provinces of Iraq that are voting after the 2005 poll. The four provinces that did not vote are … Continue reading “Iraqis Look for Hope in Election Results”

The closest thing to good news about the future of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan is that while the Obama administration is committed to sending as many as 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, several news stories have suggested that the purpose of doing so is to achieve a bit more stability to buy time to reevaluate … Continue reading “Quit Digging in Afghanistan”

We’ve truly entered a Bizarro World universe, where up is down, right is left – and the Russians, of all people, are now lecturing us about the virtues of free enterprise. Yes, it happened at the Davos conference of bigwigs, insiders, and their sycophantic hangers-on, where the elite meet to munch canapés and discuss the … Continue reading “Putin to the West: Take Your Medicine”

Editor’s note: On Jan. 26, 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark, former Danish military intelligence officer Frank Grevil was given the Sam Adams Award for integrity in intelligence. The following is an extended version of the introductory remarks by former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern. Thank you, one and all, for coming this evening at such short … Continue reading “Frank Grevil: A Hero for Our Time”

A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one-ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed. For … Continue reading “The Black Flag Is Waving”

Figuring out the direction President Barack Obama’s foreign policy will take has become a full-time job for pundits and foreign diplomats in Washington. And a key question on everyone’s mind is how exactly Obama will seek to exert influence as the American Empire shrinks. A clear consensus among Washington cognoscenti on the direction of "Obadiplomacy" … Continue reading “The Return of Realist Interventionism”

A pack of ravenous dogs, a nightmare, a visit from a war-haunted friend: this was how film director Ari Folman’s period as an Israeli “grunt” in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon first returned to him. But when he began to search for his own memories of that war, what he found instead was a puzzling, … Continue reading “Waltz With Bashir, Part 2″

Updated at 9:01 p.m. EST, Feb. 1, 2009Iraq is slowly returning to normal after historic provincial elections. At least three Iraqis were injured in the latest attacks that came as vehicle bans and other measures were removed across the country. One U.S. soldier was killed as well. According to Iraqi authorities, January was the most … Continue reading “Sunday: 1 US Soldier Killed, 3 Iraqis Wounded”

A rare sense of optimism rose in Mogadishu in the early hours of Jan. 31 as people learnt that the leader of a moderate faction of the Union of Islamic Courts, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, had been elected as head the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Sharif defeated Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, who was strongly backed … Continue reading “Sharif Returns to Power in Somalia as Militants Advance”

U.S. television coverage of the recent three-week conflict in the Gaza Strip failed to tell both sides of the story, according to a number of media analysts. The most recent conflict between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Palestinian faction Hamas garnered some media attention, with an unusually large spike in coverage, but that … Continue reading “U.S. Gaza Coverage Echoed Government Support of Israel”