The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged saudi arabia

Tea party fears U.N. intervention in 2012 election

The tea party has added another item to its list of reasons to fear the United Nations: Some in the movement say the U.N. is planning to intervene in the United States’ upcoming elections.

Colorado’s Muslim community watching unrest in Africa, Middle East intently

By | 02.23.11 | 11:25 am | More from The Colorado Independent

Members of Colorado’s relatively small Muslim community are intently watching the rising tide of unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, according to the head of the Colorado Muslim Society, and are very supportive of changes that lead to greater freedom throughout the Arab world.

“We are for More…

Counterterrorism Center Has Only ‘Eight or Nine’ Middle East Analysts

By | 01.05.10 | 12:41 pm

President Obama is scheduled to meet on Tuesday afternoon with 20 of his security advisers to receive the results of two inquiries into how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab snuck a bomb onto Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. One of those advisers is Michael Leiter, the Bush-appointed director of the More…

Sessions Presses Holder to Stop Sending Gitmo Detainees to Saudi Arabia

By | 12.09.09 | 5:37 pm

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) today sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that he stop sending Guantanamo detainees to Saudi Arabia.

Some Gitmo prisoners, particularly Yemenis with ties to Saudi Arabia, have been sent there to participate in the terrorist rehabilitation program run by the Saudi More…

Russia, China, Iran: Ponies for Everyone

By | 08.03.09 | 5:25 pm

Foreign Policy replies to my skepticism at the idea of Russia and China backing an oil-embargo package on the Iranian regime with this recent piece by Brookings’ Erica Downs on China’s looming oil-sector investments in Iran. Downs gives some reason for thinking that the United States has More…

Human Rights Watch vs. The Wall Street Journal

By | 07.15.09 | 10:07 am

The Wall Street Journal posted a small piece — reprinting a Volokh Conspiracy post from last month — attacking Human Rights Watch for raising money in Saudi Arabia. It’s an alarming claim if, as the implication has it, the NGO is taking cash from the very government it More…

David Petraeus IS A SECRET MUSLIM

By | 06.03.09 | 12:25 pm

Really, media? Is it really newsworthy that President Obama said thank you in Arabic to an Arabic-speaking leader and an Arabic-speaking press? Could it be that the reason he didn’t say “shukran” on the campaign trail was because he wasn’t addressing, say, the king of Saudi Arabia, rather than the More…

Where’s U.S. Public Diplomacy When Bin Laden Whines About Obama?

By | 06.03.09 | 9:50 am

President Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the first leg of of his outreach to what-we-maybe-shouldn’t-call-the Muslim world and, unsurprisingly, Osama bin Laden has released his latest mixtape screed against Obama and the United States more broadly. This time, to blunt the message of reconciliation and respect More…

Petraeus Talks to Arab Press About Israel/Palestine

By | 06.01.09 | 2:25 pm

In advance of President Obama’s long-awaited address to the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday, the administration appears to be seeding the public-diplomacy bed. I can’t read Arabic, but my friend Marc Lynch can, and here’s how Marc puts it in the course of a longer (and quite valuable) More…

Panetta Hearing: Bond’s Last Licks — Sort Of

By | 02.05.09 | 4:50 pm

The hearing is wrapping up. Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) laments that some of the Republican senators have left “thinking they wouldn’t get a chance to ask questions.” He wants another bite of the apple on CIA Director-Designate Leon Panetta’s rendition history. “Were you fully advised of the extraordinary renditions that More…