U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated with Sunni armed groups for several weeks earlier this year on an agreement that would have supported Sunni forces in attacking pro-Iranian Shi'ite militias, according to accounts given by commanders of armed Sunni...
The findings of a spate of polls taken since last week's release of the Iraq Study Group's (ISG) recommendations for U.S. policy show a sharp drop in public confidence both in President George W. Bush's handling of the war and in the chances that the U.S. will prevail...
Updated at 10:50 p.m. EST, Dec. 14, 2006 A mass kidnapping in the capital is the focus of news reports from Iraq today. At least 20 people, perhaps as many as 70 Iraqis, were kidnapped from a shopping district. The Dept. of Defense also reported on the death of an...
Updated at 11:05 p.m. EST, Dec. 14, 2006 Several car bombs once again rocked the capital, while small attacks killed a number of people across the country today. Overall, at least 125 were killed or found dead and 96 people were injured in separate incidents. Also,...
One of Aesop's fables recounts how once upon a time Mount Ida, the birthplace of Zeus, experienced a huge earthquake. "The earth commenced to tremble and shake – and huge boulders flew off the mountain top into the sky," the fable goes. "It seemed...
(Author's note: Some things don't seem to change. Five years after I wrote this column in the form of a news dispatch, it seems more relevant than ever.) WASHINGTON – There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the United States is not the center of the world....
Israel's long-standing policy of nuclear ambiguity came to an end the other day when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in answer to a question about his country's rumored WMD arsenal, replied, "Iran openly, explicitly, and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can...
A Pentagon plan for a massive military buildup on the Pacific island of Guam is meeting with resistance by ethnic Chamorros who live there and the Chamorro diaspora in the United States. According to the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, the Pentagon has...
The Iraq Study Group released its report [.pdf] last week, giving the president several recommendations to consider in prosecuting the war. Similarly, the incoming Democratic leaders in Congress promise to urge the president to take a new course in Iraq. Meanwhile,...
Right now, we have on the table a "possible exit strategy" from Iraq – James A. Baker's Iraq Study Group report [.pdf] – that, once you do the figures, doesn't get the U.S. even close to halfway out the door by sometime in 2008; and that report is already...
