As a Washington-based pundit with some foreign policy credentials, I frequently receive phone calls from secretaries under pressure of a deadline who book "experts" like me for radio and television news shows, asking me to "do Iraq" or chat about some other area of...
Over the years, as the actions of the Israeli government have become more extreme – and less concerned with international public opinion – very little of what Israel's leaders say or do seems all that surprising. Invading the West Bank and Gaza, demolishing...
In the 1950s and 1960s, the curious profession of Kremlinologist was developed among academics and the intelligence community. These worthies made it their business to try to figure out what the less-than-scrutable folks running the Kremlin were likely to do. It...
One of the first orders of business for the new Iraqi government under Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani and Shi'ite Islamist Ibrahim Jaafari will be to strike a deal with the United States military over the terms and conditions of the 150,000-troop-strong U.S. military...
AMMAN - The Iraqi parliament that was elected some 10 weeks ago has finally picked the three-men presidium of the Republic, making Jalal Talabani the first Kurdish president of Iraq. The appointments follow a breakthrough last week when the National Assembly at last...
Whenever the administration is challenged regarding the success of the Iraq war, or regarding the false information used to justify the war, the retort is: "Aren't the people of Iraq better off?" The insinuation is that anyone who expresses any reservations...
In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the USA PATRIOT Act, the following exchange took place between former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, now attorney general, and Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.): "GONZALES: Mr. Chairman, let me, kind of, reassure the...
Bizarre Balkans Bulletin There is a good reason most contemporary Balkans literature tends to be surreal. It is hard to write realistic fiction when reality is far more bizarre than anything literary wizards are capable of conjuring. In a place that logic and reason...
If Iraq has been the disaster zone of Bush foreign policy, Afghanistan is still generally thought of as its success story – to the extent that anyone in our part of the world thinks about that country at all any more. Before the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan...
The (unrequited) love of my life did his basic training in an elite Israeli commando. Once, after he had been characteristically belligerent, his "merciful" commanders made him stand in the rain throughout the night, bed on back. At 19, he was a powerfully...
