It gives me little pleasure to suggest that the block parties in Miami's Little Havana were premature. I have had a visceral dislike for Fidel Castro and what he has done to what is by nature one of the most pleasant places on earth for a long time, and there will be...
Remember Iraq?
"Trust that Iraq will be the graveyard for terrorism and terrorists for the good of all humanity," said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in an address to a joint session of Congress that went reasonably well despite some grumbling in advance. "Iraq...
Reality Bites Back
There are always multiple causes for an event so complex as a war – and what's going on now between Israel and Hezbollah fighters based in Lebanon has gone well beyond the skirmish phase. However, the current conflict is to a considerable degree an example of...
Reality-Based Recommendations
On September 11, 2001 the United States was attacked – assuming U.S. intelligence assessments and admissions/boastings by Osama bin Laden are correct – by an action arm of the kind of decentralized, stateless terror network that defines the most notable...
Another Dubious Turning Point
An incredible quantity of ink and electronic data points have been lavished on the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, supposedly the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq – though that was almost certainly an alliance of convenience rather than a close working relationship....
Spooks and Libya
Perhaps it's appropriate in a world of wheels within wheels, secrets within lies, and deeper shadows in the shadows. But the sources I tapped in Washington and elsewhere about Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden's appointment as CIA director didn't offer a whole lot of...
Cold Assumptions
Supporters of the Bush administration's approach to what is sometimes grandly (or grandiosely) called the Global War on Terror (GWOT), if accounts of some intra-administration discussions are accurate, have sometimes been fond of asserting that the world changed on...
France: Reinforcing Addiction
The ongoing demonstrations in France suggest that a welfare state is very much like an addictive drug. Even though it no longer delivers the euphoric feeling that first lured users, even though almost all concerned, including the most dependent, know that continued...
Acknowledging the Rush to War
It is perhaps ironic – but charming to one who finds the phenomenon that intentions good and ill so often go awry more amusing than infuriating – that it has been in Great Britain, with its vaunted Official Secrets Act, that leaks have occurred that have...
Iraq Three Years On
So have we learned anything after three years in Iraq and two years and 10 months after the White House created a "Mission Accomplished" sign for an aircraft carrier on which President Bush spoke? Well, we learned, or were reminded, early on in the Iraq war,...