A poll released Tuesday shows that Iranians are still strongly in favor of continuing their government’s nuclear program, but are open to compromises which would permit uranium enrichment while allowing international inspectors access to ensure that no bomb-making activities are taking place if sanctions are dropped. Meanwhile, Iran hawks in the United States are pushing …
Continue reading “Poll Finds Iranian Support for Nuclear Power, Not Weapons”
Updated at 8:15 p.m. EDT, Sept. 23, 2009
With the Eid holiday over, news reporting out of Iraq resumed today. At least 13 Iraqis were killed and 19 more were wounded in the latest violence. Meanwhile, the policeman father of an Iraqi man beaten to death by British troops testified at a public inquiry that he believes the attack was in revenge for his reporting on the theft of money by British soldiers.
Although the tentacles of Baracktopus have slithered into as many parts of American life as those of his "big government Republican" predecessor, Obama does seem to have much better instincts in foreign policy than George W. Bush. But lest that be seen as damning by faint praise, let’s just say that Obama, like the Washington …
Continue reading “Obama Needs to Expand on His Good Instincts in Foreign Policy”
On Sept. 4, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force conducted an air strike on a fuel tank hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. The attack killed dozens of people, including civilians, according to NATO sources. However, the German minister of defense, Franz Josef Jung, has stubbornly denied that the attack harmed civilians, insisting instead that …
Continue reading “German Peace Movement Demands Withdrawal From Afghanistan”
On Monday, following a request from the Obama administration, Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military judge in the proposed trial by military commission of five men charged in connection with the 9/11 attacks – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, and Walid bin Attash – agreed to the government’s …
Continue reading “9/11 Trial At Guantánamo Delayed Again”
Is the Afghan war already lost? Well, not quite, says the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, but almost: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." That’s the gist of …
Continue reading “McChrystal’s Conundrum”
The leak of the "initial assessment" of the war in Afghanistan by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in the war, with its blunt warning that "[f]ailure to provide adequate resources" is likely to result in "mission failure," was part of an obvious effort to force the hand of a reluctant President Barack Obama …
Continue reading “US Afghan Campaign Plan Says Key Groups Back Taliban”
The Washington Post yesterday made available an unclassified version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s long-awaited report on the war in Afghanistan. Politically, the report is bold, in that it acknowledges the enemy has the initiative and we have been fighting the war – for eight years – in counterproductive ways. But intellectually, both as analysis and …
Continue reading “Last Exit Before Quagmire”
JERUSALEM – "Nobody can usurp the right to determine the fate of the nation on their own – not the Palestine Liberation Organization, nor anyone else. It is the will of the Palestinian people that must determine our future," declares Hamas political leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh was speaking Sunday at the onset of …
Continue reading “US Pushing Beyond Settlement Freeze”
Updated at 5:51 p.m. EDT, Sept. 22, 2009
Due the Eid al-Fitr holiday, news out of Iraq has been scant. Only two people were reported wounded today. Back in the United States, a U.S. soldier has been charged with murder in the death of a U.S. contractor on Sept. 13 in Tikrit, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is in New York to ask the United Nations to drop any Saddam-era debts Iraq still owes.
