Israel is often viewed by Washington politicians as the most "stable" ally in the Middle East. But stability from the American perspective can mean many things. Lead amongst them is that the "ally" must be unconditionally loyal to the diktats of the US administration. This rule has proven to be true since the United States …
Continue reading “The US and Israel’s Strange but ‘Stable’ Alliance”
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees warned that residents are fleeing the areas in and around the cities of Ramadi and Falluja in numbers that rival those at the height of the sectarian war ended six years ago. At least 19 people were killed and 86 more were wounded today. Most of the wounded were injured during shelling in Anbar province.
The media spin machine is again kicking into high gear, perfectly timed to accompany the "Geneva II" Syria peace talks. The lies are necessary to give the Obama administration an upper hand in the peace negotiations, which are not being used to pursue peace, but instead, to accomplish the Obama administration’s longstanding goal of Syrian …
Continue reading “Top Three Media Lies About the Syrian Peace Talks”
The perfectly timed release of photographic evidence of torture and killing on the part of the Syrian government on the very eve of the Geneva II peace talks may or may not be authentic. There have been atrocities on both sides, and these pictures could be evidence of government atrocities. But one cannot forget the …
Continue reading “Switching Sides in Syria? Unbelievable, but Not Unprecedented”
We haven’t seen anything like this since the Vietnam war era: an administration caught red-handed illegally and systematically spying on Americans in the midst of an increasingly unpopular war. At that time, too, the political class was badly divided, with the hard-liners circling their wagons against the rising tide of popular outrage and the dissenters …
Continue reading “The Snowden Effect and the Liberal Implosion”
The speaker of parliament, Osama al-Nujaifi, is on a trip to Washington to meet with U.S. leaders. The top Sunni politician said that the Sunnis are hoping the situation in Anbar province will force Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government to give greater power to Sunnis. However, the deterioration of security in Anbar was due to …
Continue reading “More Executions, Clashes, and Attacks for Iraq: 38 Killed, 51 Wounded”
When President Obama chose a Friday before a three-day holiday weekend to address a matter as profound as the NSA spying scandal, I suspected he would raise issues that he hoped the media would ignore. That’s because the Reagan White House did a study in the early 1980s and concluded that Fridays are low-value news …
Continue reading “Presidential Placebo”
Eight years ago, Stephen Rosen, then a top official at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and well-known around Washington for his aggressiveness, hawkish views, and political smarts, was asked by Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker magazine whether some recent negative publicity had harmed the lobby group’s legendary clout in Washington. “A half …
Continue reading “Top Israel Lobby Group Loses Battle on Iran, But War Not Over”
It’s heartening to see that an agreement has been reached to ensure that Iran honors its commitment, made when it signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to forgo developing nuclear weapons. But what about the other key part of the NPT, Article VI, which commits nuclear-armed nations to "cessation of the nuclear arms race …
Continue reading “The Endless Arms Race: Despite Promises, New Nuclear Weapons Are On the Way”
At least 88 people, mostly gunmen, were killed, and 29 more were wounded in violence across Iraq.
