As former top State Department intelligence specialist Wayne White points out for Lobe Log, in the absence of a tenable ceasefire agreement, the quagmire that is the Syrian civil war will likely intensify, thereby only worsening post-Assad scenarios. “The bottom line is that a… Continue Reading
Criticism of former Senator Chuck Hagel for not backing the 2007 US “troop surge” in Iraq demands an explanation of why that relatively small reinforcement was not the main driver for reversing Iraq’s descent into violent chaos. In fact, when… Continue Reading
By Karen J. Greenberg via Tom Dispatch On January 11th, 11 years to the day after the Bush administration opened itsnotorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s deeply flawed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. The… Continue Reading
As Lobe Log alumnus Ali Gharib eloquently argues, when all the facts are considered, claims about Chuck Hagel’s alleged anti-Semitism boil down to “slander pushed almost exclusively by a small coterie of neoconservatives“, one of whom he responds to directly: Elliott Abrams.… Continue Reading
By Erich Ferrari via Sanctions Law Last Thursday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) announced the removal of two parties designated under the Iraq Stabilization and Insurgency Sanctions program (“Iraq Sanctions”). These sanctions were put into law by… Continue Reading