A State Department official's assertion in late December that Iran had exerted a restraining influence on Iraqi Shi'ite militia violence signaled a major divergence of views between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates over how to...
Have you heard the news? Iran is not Iraq. On the surface, the two neighboring countries seem similar enough. Iran and Iraq hold the world's 2nd and 3rd largest oil reserves respectively, have Shi'ite majorities, share a long border, and fought a pointless, bloody...
Updated at 11:58 p.m. EST, Jan. 2, 2008A female suicide bomber struck Baquba for the second time this week and only a day after a major bombing in Baghdad. The recent surge in bombings coincides with a message from Osama bin Laden threatening an increase in such...
Columnist Robert Novak is hardly a neoconservative. He has often been harshly critical of Israel, which would automatically disqualify him from joining that elite group, but he apparently shares the neocon view of the U.S. intelligence community. In a Christmas Eve...
Mephisto, the demon who bought the soul of Faust in Goethe's monumental drama, describes himself as "a part of that force which always wants the bad and always creates the good." Yossi Beilin, who resigned this week as chairman of the Meretz Party, is...
Updated at 10:40 p.m. EST, Jan. 1, 2008At least 62 Iraqis were killed and 70 wounded in the latest attacks, which included a significant suicide bombing at a funeral in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government released their official casualty figures for 2007; the...
The conventional wisdom among presidential candidates is that the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has proved the importance of continued American meddling in that land. Both Republicans and Democrats are rushing to mumble incoherent...
If the last days of 2007 are any indication, U.S. President George W. Bush's last year in office is shaping up as grim and lonely. Grim, because Bush's signature "war on terror" is nowhere near the kind of "victory" on which he had placed so much hope. Hundreds of...
The drumbeat to "do something" about Pakistan – preferably of a military nature – has been going on for some time, and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is the perfect catalyst for such an enormous blunder. As far back as this last summer, the...
Updated at 11:05 p.m. EST, Dec. 31, 2007At least 49 Iraqis were killed and 35 more were wounded during violence that included security raids in several cities. A suicide bomber detonated his cargo near a school just north of Baghdad, and female bomber struck in...
