Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress
GOP presidential primary frontrunner Mitt Romney told the audience at Saturday’s CBS News/National Journal debate that Pakistan is “comfortable” with U.S. drone strikes within their borders. But after years of deadly drone strikes, and as many as 10 civilian deaths for every militant killed, polling [...]
Its Full Extent Revealed for the First Time
Reposted by arrangement with Tom Dispatch
By Nick Turse
They increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French [...]
Reposted by arrangement with Tom Dispatch
In the world of weaponry, they are the sexiest things around. Others countries are desperate to have them. Almost anyone who writes about them becomes a groupie. Reporters exploring their onrushing future swoon at their potentially wondrous techno-talents. [...]
Peshawar-based journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai has an interesting article on the “new great game” in Afghanistan between players Iran, Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia. Yusufzai argues for the Pakistani viewpoint, but his insights are relevant for all policy players in the region.
He writes:
Many Afghans and those following the political situation in Afghanistan sometimes liken [...]
Posted with the permission of Think Progress
While the investigation continues into the deadly attack on a U.S. helicopter in Afghanistan which resulted in 38 U.S. and Afghan deaths, the lack of information has led some right-wing pundits to point the finger at Iran. Last night, CNN’s John King interviewed Frances Townsend, [...]
Stephen M. Walt, co-author of the ground-breaking The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, gave a keynote address on “Obama’s Foreign Policy and the End of the American Era” at an event is co-hosted by the IIEA and UCD’s Clinton Institute for American Studies. You can download the Post [...]
Recent news that the Obama administration plans to expand drone warfare in Yemen under the auspices of the CIA — the military has already been running a smaller-scale drone war in Yemen for some time now — highlights the need to make drones a more central topic of conversation in discussion of the U.S.’s [...]
BBC poll data indicates that 25% percent of Egyptian respondents view Iran favorably, nearly the same number as view U.S. influence as positive (26%). Nearly equal numbers of Turkish respondents approve of the influence of the U.S. (35%) and Iran (36%). Half of those polled, in countries long regarded as the staunchest Middle East allies of both the U.S. and of Israel–50% in Egypt, 49% in Turkey– expressed negativity about U.S. influence, with only 32% of Egyptians and 45% of Turks worried about Iran.
In their zeal to undermine or discredit Obama in any way they can, the neo-conservative Weekly Standard and former top Bush adviser Karl Rove have been indirectly making the case that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the single, most important recruitment tool of Al Qaeda and presumably other violent Islamist groups based in the borderlands of [...]
(Late-breaking updates below, including reactions and Jundullah’s claim of responsibility.)
Iran blamed the United States for a suicide attack in the Islamic Republic’s restive Southeast. While Iran is mostly a Shia country, the Southeast is home to a Sunni ethnic Baluchi population that straddles the border with Pakistan.
Iran [...]
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