Obama to Increase “Scope and Scale” of Aid to Syrian Rebels

by Jim Lobe via IPS News With U.S. intelligence agencies’ concluding that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebel forces, the White House announced Thursday that it will increase “the scope and scale” of assistance it has been… Continue Reading

Iraq: Maliki & Co.’s Path of Folly

by Wayne White The Biblical quotation, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” could not be more relevant to what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s near unremitting hostility toward Iraq’s powerful Sunni Arab minority has generated: a rising drumfire… Continue Reading

Assad May Not Be Key to Iran’s Levantine Reach: A Critique of AEI-ISW Report

by Aurélie M. Daher That Iran is deeply concerned with the civil war in Syria and is currently providing important assistance to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is not in question. What remains to be determined, however, is the form that its… Continue Reading

Obama Seen Unlikely to Sharply Escalate Intervention in Syria

by Jim Lobe via IPS News Despite renewed pressure by hawks in Congress and the media, U.S. President Barack Obama appears determined to avoid sharply escalating U.S. involvement in the ongoing civil war in Syria. While administration officials insist that… Continue Reading

New Excuse for Greater CIA Involvement in Iraq

by Wayne White With a long history of misguided, damaging American intervention and meddling in the Middle East, the reported CIA effort to target the al-Nusra Front in Syria by helping Iraqi anti-terrorism units to attack its roots in Iraq… Continue Reading