Protests took place for the fourth time since Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi's bodyguards were arrested last week. In one protest, thousands blocked the main highway through Anbar province. Another protest erupted in neighboring Salah ad Din province. The Sunni...
I’m taking Christmas off, which means no column the day after. I don’t usually take off for this particular holiday, but this year I’m, frankly, quite tired: exhausted, really. I need a break, however brief: I’ll be back on Friday. I don’t know how many Christmas...
My dad called me and left a message the other day, having just heard that former Senator Chuck Hagel was being considered for Secretary of Defense. “You have a connection to him, no?” he asked, before hanging up. A connection, yes — a very brief and limited, but very...
This Christmas is a bleak one for those who hold out hope that there might be peace on earth — or just a more peaceful earth. In the Middle East, wars and rumors of war roil an already volatile region. A proxy war in Syria shows every sign of metastasizing into a...
Here’s the question no one is asking as 2012 ends, especially given the effusive public support the Obama administration offered Israel in its recent conflict with Hamas in Gaza: Will 2013 be a year of confrontation between Washington and Jerusalem? ...
There has been a lot of pushback against the neoconservatives' preemptive smear campaign against Chuck Hagel, much of it illuminating, but none as clear-headed as that by Paul Pillar in The National Interest, who starts out his piece this way: "The effort to...
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) gave the following speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on December 20, 2012. Mr. Speaker I rise to oppose what will be the final National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) I will face as a Member of the US House of...
