Years ago Stratfor.com, the private intelligence service and Web site, maintained that the real purpose of the Iraq war was to establish permanent U.S . bases in Iraq, to serve as forward staging areas for future forays in the world wide "war on terror," in someplace...
Saturday: 1 US Soldier, 40 Iraqis Killed; 46 Iraqis Wounded; 41 Iraqis Kidnapped
Updated at 12:27 a.m. EST, Dec. 2, 2007At least 40 Iraqis were killed and 46 more wounded during the latest violence. One U.S. soldier was also killed. Meanwhile, Sunni lawmakers walked out of parliament to protest the house arrest of their leader, while the Interior...
Khrushchev’s Cold War
Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War (New York: Norton paperback, 2007), 670 pp. Überhawks carelessly toss around the Hitler comparison Ho Chi Minh was Hitler. Slobodan Milosevic was Hitler. Saddam Hussein was Hitler. Now Mahmoud...
McCain’s Mangled Metaphor
Never mind Hillary's plants or that guitar-strumming singing wannabe pundit, the real news out of the Youtube/CNN GOP slugfest is that John McCain's failing, cash-strapped campaign was dealt another heavy blow in his embarrassing tiff with antiwar Republican Ron Paul....
Catch 22 in Iraq: Why American Troops Can’t Go Home
Whoa, let's hold those surging horses in check a moment. Violence has lessened in Iraq. That seems to be a fact of the last two months and, for the Iraqis, a positive one, obviously. What to make of the "good news" from Iraq is another matter entirely, one made...
Blowback From Moscow
Our next president will likely face a Russia led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, determined to stand up to a West that Russians believe played them for fools when they sought to be friends. Americans who think Putin has never been anything but a KGB thug...
A Tenuous ‘Peace’ in Anbar
RAMADI, Iraq - A semblance of calm belies an undercurrent of violence, detentions and fear across Iraq's volatile Anbar province. The province – which occupies one-third of Iraq's geographic area – has been a bane to authorities since the beginning of the...
Friday: 2 U.S. Soldiers, 21 Iraqis Killed; 9 Iraqis Wounded; 30 Iraqis Kidnapped
Updated at 11:55 p.m. EST, Nov. 30, 2007An otherwise quiet prayer day was marked by the detention of dozens of people associated with a Sunni leader. Five U.S. soldiers were injured during a controlled detonation of a car bomb found at the politician’s Baghdad...
In the Foxs Lair
One reason parts of Iraq have quieted down, at least for a while, has received widespread attention: the Sunni split from al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda's own tactics alienated its base, which is usually a fatal political mistake, and for once we were wise enough not to get in...
Much Ado About Annapolis
ANNAPOLIS, Maryland - The Middle East peace conference that began and ended here on this crisp, sunny Tuesday was lean on specifics for a lasting peace deal between Israel and Palestine and the formation of a Palestinian state. Dealing with a timeline for continued...


