Last December, after President Obama’s self-imposed deadline for direct, preconditionless negotiations with Iran expired without Iranian receptivity, administration officials told me they were gearing up to place economic sanctions on Iran as soon as they could arrange for international support. The New York Times reports that an actual More…
Mitt Romney’s just-published book, “No Apology: The Case For American Greatness,” is a bid to bolster the former Massachusetts governor’s nonexistent national-security and foreign policy portfolio ahead of a possible 2012 presidential run. But a glance through the remarkable conflation of conservative shibboleths, paranoid global fantasies and deterministic myopia in More…
I try not to write about every development in the career of Orly Taitz, but I have to make an exception for her appeal to the United Nations for “urgent action under the mandate for human rights defenders.” Her attorney, Jonathan Levy, writes that Taitz is under “increasing legal attack More…
Just out from State Department press chief P.J. Crowley:
The Secretary of State has designated al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (INA). The Secretary also designated AQAP and its two top leaders Nasir
According to a new United Nations report, 2009 was the deadliest year for Afghan civilians since the U.S. invaded in 2001. The international body tallied 2,412 civilian deaths, a spike from 2,118 killed in 2008. But insurgents were responsible for the vast majority. The population-protection measures taken by Gen. Stanley More…
Speaking of ousted United Nations deputy representative to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith, Galbraith was recently accused in a New York Times piece of promoting the ouster of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. It’s a really serious accusation. And now Galbraith says, at great length, that there’s no truth to it.
In More…
After the August electoral impasse destroyed the partnership of Kai Eide and Peter Galbraith, the United Nations’ top diplomats in Afghanistan, it’s been unclear who wants to step into the morass that is the UN mission to Kabul. But Laura Rozen has some answers:
Now that Rep. Howard Berman’s (D-Calif.) bill authorizing new energy-sector sanctions on Iran has passed the House, the Obama administration is looking to the Senate to cool things down. The Obama administration “didn’t tell me to go ahead, but they also didn’t tell me not to go ahead,” Berman More…
Speaking of the Obama administration hinting at new sanctions placed on Iran, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a visit to the Kurdish regions of Iraq, dropped all subtlety:
President Obama had set a Dec. 31 deadline for Iran to respond to the proposals before he turns to pursuing what
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