James Jeffrey, former US Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, in a March 2021 interview with PBS Frontline, laid out very plainly the template for what has just happened in Syria this month: “Syria, given its size, its strategic location, its historical importance, is the...
Starting Monday night and into Tuesday, large demonstrations broke out in Christian areas of Damascus and other parts of Syria over the continued presence of foreign jihadists in the country. The ruling Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has vowed to protect the sizeable...
This week saw a new twist in what has become a D.C. Christmas tradition. I am not referring to the lighting of the White House Christmas tree but to passage of a “continuing resolution” (CR) funding the government and thus avoiding a Christmastime government shutdown....
Russian President Vladimir Putin, during his Results of the Year annual marathon yearender interactive televised discussion with the Russian public and the media in Moscow on December 19, spoke at some length on the recent developments in Syria. These...
Upon his inauguration as president, Donald Trump will become the leader of a United States executive branch mired in two major wars via its continuing pumping of money, weapons, and intelligence into support of the Ukraine and Israel governments. Trump has declared...
As an academic and a legal commentator, I have sometimes disagreed with the United States Supreme Court, but I often stress the good-faith differences in how certain rights or protections are interpreted. One case, however, has long stood out for me as wildly off-base...
The early November detention of Asif Rahman, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, indicted in a federal national security court in the Eastern District of Virginia on two counts of “willful retention and transmission of national defense information...
“God help the Nation when it has a President who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do.” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking to his trusted White House Staff Secretary, Gen. Andrew Goodpaster. These words are quoted in the book “Ike’s Bluff – President...
The leaders of President-elect Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have been meeting with Republican lawmakers recently. None of those involved shared details from their meetings, which was by design to allow for...
The skies over New Jersey have been littered with strange flying objects during the past two weeks; and the feds are either hiding the truth from terrified folks on the ground or scratching their collective heads along with the rest of us. Since early December, there...
Syria has entered the abyss – the demons of al-Qa’eda, ISIS, and the most intransigent elements of the Muslim Brotherhood are circling the skies. There is chaos, looting, fear, and a terrible passion for revenge scalds the blood. Street executions are rife....
Peace is not at hand in the Middle East, and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu remains determined to expand the war. Syria’s de facto partition into Israeli and Turkish territories is the prelude to wider war with Iran. As the Times of Israel reported last week, the...
“I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” – Winston Churchill, 1942 Many Americans, even a lot who never much cared for Donald Trump, voted for him in part because they believed – or at least hoped –...
The American police state has become America’s new crime boss. Thirty years after then-President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law, its legacy of mass incarceration, police militarization, and over-criminalization continues...
Below is my column in The Hill on recent reports that the use of my name in search requests on ChatGPT results in an error and no response. I am apparently not alone in this haunt of ghosted individuals. The controversy raises some novel and chilling questions about...
Triumphant rhetoric in the corridors of Washington, DC celebrating the collapse of the Syrian government as a major victory over Russia is both foolish and short-sighted. I will explain. Let’s start with the situation in Ukraine. There is a growing atmosphere of...
My first reaction to news earlier this month that the Syrian government had been overthrown was, how much did we have to do with it; how involved was the CIA; and how much is it going to cost. As with Saddam and Gaddafi before him, we know that Assad was no...
The US has made "direct contact" with the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) under Abu Mohammad al-Jolani which now holds Damascus and most major Syrian cities in the wake of Assad's fall. "We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties," US...
On December 3 the President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol launched a coup against the opposition ruled National Assembly. He declared martial law and ordered military special forces and police units to block law makers from assembling. But the assembly...
On 4 October I spoke to a meeting of the United European Left group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Arriving a bit early, I sat though a presentation by a Moldovan judge, Victoria Sanduta, who was formerly the President of the Association of...
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