An article today by Charlie Savage in the New York Times looks at President Obama's announcement of "waivers" related to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its provisions related to the open-ended military detention of suspects. It is noteworthy in two...
George Little, Pentagon Press Secretary and Captain John Kirby, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Media Operations spoke to reporters yesterday about the ruckus unleashed in Afghanistan after the U.S. military burned Muslim holy books. Massive protests have...
At Mondoweiss, Allison Deger informs us of pending Israeli legislation that would allow Israeli settlers in the West Bank to construct unpaved roads without a permit. Essentially, "settlers would be given a quick and cheap holding tactic, to confiscate Palestinian...
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a very interesting exchange with Wyatt Andrews of CBS News yesterday. In it, Clinton suggested the opposition fighters in Syria are not a cohesive enough group to justify sending arms and that U.S. intervention on behalf of the...
I wrote recently about how even the mainstream media is coming around to reporting the consensus within the U.S. intelligence community, that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons and has demonstrated no intention of doing so. For example, the New York Times ran a...
Here's a nice, raucous, Sunday morning debate between Jeremy Scahill and Ann-Marie Slaughter on Up with Chris Hayes. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The imposition of ever stricter sanctions on Iran over its civilian nuclear program has already spilled over in a big way against Iran's private economy, though it has largely spared the public sector that it supposedly targets. But we can add another side effect to...
Rick Santorum has always seemed a little too good to be true. Michael Ledeen, for one, has fallen right into the trap, in his recent Wall St. Journal piece, “Santorum was right about Iran – When It was Unpopular.” But then one looks at Ledeen’s subtitle, “A...
Fresh off yesterday's story of US rice farmers being "furious" that Iraqis are buying their rice from other countries now that the US occupation is over, twelve members of Congress have fired off a letter to Iraq's Trade Minister pressing for him to get Iraqis back on...
As I wrote about in today's news section, the so-called "Friends of Syria" conference of almost 70 nations in Tunisia is calling for (1) a cease fire and (2) a subsequent UN "peacekeeping" force to have unrestricted access to Syria. While I have no illusions about how...
