This Is How Empires End

Responding to the call of Pope Urban II at Claremont in 1095, the Christian knights of the First Crusade set out for the Holy Land. In 1099, Jerusalem was captured. As their port in Palestine, the Crusaders settled on Acre on the Mediterranean. There they...

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Framing the Russians

What in the name of all that's holy is going on with Russia and the Brits? The British government has recently expelled four Russian diplomats, supposedly in retaliation for the Russkis' refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi – a suspect in one of the most bizarre...

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Pakistani al-Qaeda a Real Threat – US Intelligence

The United States intelligence community's latest assessment of al-Qaeda and the threat it poses to the homeland appears to have both renewed questions about the wisdom of invading Iraq and returned the spotlight to an increasingly strife-ridden Pakistan. The latest...

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Partisan Lines Harden in Iraq Debate

After a week and a half of Senate debate, including an all-night session Tuesday, the possibility that legislation to de-escalate US military intervention in Iraq soon could be adopted by a strong bipartisan majority appears to have receded, at least until...

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Counting Troops in Iraq

This past week, both the House and the Senate debated and voted on legislation affecting the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq. In the Senate, the issue was the length of time soldiers and Marines would have at home between deployments to the war zones of Iraq and...

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Summer of Discontent

Though July is supposed to be a month of vacations in the northern hemisphere, dictated by the often murderous heat, it appears political temperatures have been spiking along with actual ones. Relations between Russia and the Empire continued to deteriorate rapidly,...

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Bush’s Wooden-Headedness Kills

President George W. Bush is convinced, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that he is on the right course in the war in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism. He says he will not change his mind. Thus, we are at an historic moment; and we would be well...

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Congress Pushes Sanctions on Iran

As the United States and its United Nations allies plan to push for stiffer economic sanctions on Iran over its refusal to halt its nuclear program, an Iran sanctions bill making its way through Congress includes several key measures that may threaten US diplomacy...

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Can’t Find Osama?
Attack Iran Instead

The July 17 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) "On the Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland" [.pdf] warns that al-Qaeda has reconstituted itself in the tribal areas of U.S. ally Pakistan, that it has resumed training of cadres intending to carry out "high impact...

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