Tightened security in Nineva and Anbar provinces was successful in preventing any major attacks against voters today. However, some violence did occur. At least 12 Iraqis were killed in it, and another 16 were wounded. Only two provinces participated in polling. Elections in 12 other provinces took place in April.
When former spy Edward Snowden revealed to the world that the federal government is spying on most Americans, most Americans were surprised and unhappy. But half of official Washington yawned before it roared. Somehow the people in the government had a pretty good idea of what government spies are doing, and they more or less …
Continue reading “Fidelity to the Constitution When We Need It”
If Senator Rand Paul truly listened to his father for all those years why does he sometimes act like Mitt Romney? To be sure he has taken some positive positions regarding the surveillance state and the use of drones, though even there he frequently comes out with a zinger that suggests that he is not …
Continue reading “Rand Paul, Defender of the Faith”
Ahead of tomorrow’s provincial elections, security forces have taken various methods to prevent violence. Still, at least 21 people were killed and 47 more were wounded.
At the G-8 Summit in Northern Ireland, Russia faced pressure from the other seven attending nations to push Bashar al-Assad, its Syrian ally, to negotiate his abdication with the West. Since Assad and his Syrian government forces, well supplied by Russia with weaponry, are now winning the Syrian civil war, that outcome is extremely unlikely …
Continue reading “Down the Slippery Slope in Syria”
The other day, Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-supported Afghan president who was once sardonically nicknamed “the mayor of Kabul,” had a few curious things to say about American policy in the Muslim world. Karzai, of course, is a man whose opinions – whether on U.S. special operations forces and their (out of control) militias, U.S. night …
Continue reading “The U.S. Military and the Unraveling of Africa”
What could be more fun? An articulate and very smart young man our Washington mandarins deride as a "twenty-something high school dropout" has the US national security establishment, the Washington punditocracy, and the President himself in a panicky lather. Government officials are howling with outrage, and calling for Edward Snowden’s head. The pundits are livid: …
Continue reading “Edward Snowden vs. the Sovietization of America”
The bombings returned to Baghdad today, where a Shi’ite mosque took the brunt of the attacks.
Edward Snowden, a low-level employee of Booz Allen Hamilton who blew the whistle on the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), unexpectedly exposed a powerful and seamless segment of the military-industrial complex – the world of contractors that consumes some 70 percent of this country’s 52-billion-dollar intelligence budget. Some commentators have pounced on Snowden’s disclosures to …
Continue reading “How Booz Allen Made the Revolving Door Redundant”
Barack Obama has just taken his first baby steps into a war in Syria that may define and destroy his presidency. Thursday, while he was ringing in Gay Pride Month with LGBT revelers, a staffer, Ben Rhodes, informed the White House press that U.S. weapons will be going to the Syrian rebels. For two years …
Continue reading “A Reluctant Warrior Tiptoes to War” 
