“If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you,” said Calvin Coolidge, who ever counseled patience over the rash response. Unfortunately, the troubles presented by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un seem unlikely to run into a ditch before they reach …
Continue reading “Is War With North Korea Inevitable?”
Fresh violence left five people dead and 15 wounded.
The U.S. should not only focus on the short-term goal of “suspending or delaying” Iran’s alleged quest for a nuclear weapons capability, but also on “curtailing Iran’s other worrisome activities in the region while encouraging – or at least, not derailing – a better relationship with the citizens of the pivotal state,” according to a …
Continue reading “Report Calls to Engage Iran’s People While Preventing Nuke”
Last week the Washington Post reported on the Justice Department’s unsuccessful attempt at changing the laws so as to make it easier for the government to obtain access to emails of US citizens without a warrant. This report should be unsettling to those that value their relative freedoms. Unfortunately, these types of actions have become …
Continue reading “Obama’s War at Home: Driving the Government Underground”
What’s happening between the U.S. and North Korea to produce such headlines in recent days as “Korean Tensions Escalate,” and “North Korea Threatens U.S.”? The New York Times reported, “This week, North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jung-un, ordered his underlings to prepare for a missile attack on the United States. He appeared at a command …
Continue reading “Behind the US-North Korean Bluster”
With all sides seeming to climb further up the escalatory ladder over the last several days, defusing the ongoing crisis on the Korean Peninsula — let alone persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arsenal as it once promised to do — looks daunting. Indeed, the latest moves by the major players – the two …
Continue reading “Escalating Korea Crisis Dims Hopes for Denuclearisation”
In a recent op-ed entitled "Blunders to Remember" David Ignatius of the Washington Post apologized for his shortcomings in "being wrong on the overriding question of whether the [Iraq] war made sense." The op-ed’s recognition of the media frenzy that accompanied the invasion and occupation of Iraq reminded me once again of just how the …
Continue reading “Failed by the Fourth Estate”
Gunmen in Abu Ghraib killed a Sahwa member and his mother. One brother was killed in the attack. Another brother was also wounded. Two policemen were killed and third was wounded in a bombing near Mosul. In town, gunmen killed a civilian. A bomb in Sharqat killed a policeman and wounded another. In Kahla, the …
Continue reading “Nine Killed Across Iraq”
Many Americans – except perhaps the very small percentage nowadays who actually have served in the American armed forces – have a stereotypic image of "military efficiency" and thus assume that any cuts to the defense budget will make the nation less secure. In reality, however, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has the same …
Continue reading “Irresponsibility in the Department of Defense”
America’s post-9/11 conflicts have been wars of corruption, a point surprisingly seldom made in the mainstream media. Keep in mind that George W. Bush’s administration was a monster of privatization. It had its own set of crony corporations, including Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel, and various oil companies, as well as a set of mercenary rent-a-gun outfits like Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple …
Continue reading “How the Pentagon Corrupted Afghanistan” 
