Clandestine – Not Illegal

Gotthard Lerch, a German businessman specializing in the manufacture and sale of industrial vacuum systems, has been on trial, charged with violating German export-control laws by participating in a scheme to clandestinely supply Libya with "support systems" for a...

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My Fellow Targets

There are two proposals for a cease-fire in Lebanon. One is French and is backed by the European Union and most of the Muslim world. The other is Israeli-American and backed only by Israel and the United States. There is one main difference. The French proposal is for...

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Cuba: Same as the Old Boss

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...

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Flunking Counterinsurgency 101

On the April day in 2003 when American troops first pushed into Baghdad, historian Marilyn Young noted a strange phenomenon. In a single rush, the Vietnam War vocabulary had returned to our media. She promptly dubbed Iraq, "Vietnam on crack cocaine." It's true that,...

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Israel’s Bid to Reestablish Deterrence Is Failing

Israel's war against Lebanon is about reestablishing its conventional deterrence. That is the ultimate goal, even though a frequently stated purpose of that war is to disarm Hezbollah as a fighting force in Lebanon, or even to neutralize it. The most telling aspect of...

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The Day After the War

The day after the war will be the Day of the Long Knives. Everybody will blame everybody else. The politicians will blame each other. The generals will blame each other. The politicians will blame the generals. And, most of all, the generals will blame the...

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Winning the Propaganda War

Here are some interesting points raised this week by a leading commentator and published in a respected daily newspaper: "The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert embeds his soldiers in Israeli communities, next to schools, beside hospitals, close to welfare...

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War: The Great Clarifier

In the 1920s, H. L. Mencken was considered a man of the Left, due to his opposition to prohibition and the cultural know-nothingism of what he mockingly called "the booboisie." By the 1930s, however – although his views had changed not one whit –...

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US Watches Dreams of Transformation Dissolve

Entering the fourth week of war between Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and Israel, the George W. Bush administration's ambitions to transform the Arab Middle East into a pro-Western, more democratic region are fading fast. Not only is Washington's thus-far staunch...

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Olmert’s War Easier to Start Than Stop

JERUSALEM - Israeli commandos snatching Hezbollah operatives deep inside Lebanon. Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah fighters in villages along the Lebanese-Israel border. Thousands of troops streaming into south Lebanon. Hezbollah rockets again raining down by the...

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