via Lobe Log
by James A. Russell
It’s been a bad week for the United States. If ever the world wanted another example of America’s dysfunction and decline, this would be the time to see how the “Ball of Confusion” just rolled right over us.
Norman Whitfield and Barrett [...]
by Gareth Porter
via IPS News
A review of Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s “Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Metropolitan Books, 2013)
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus [...]
by Jim Lobe
via IPS News
Despite an appeal Thursday by 15 right-wing Republican senators for President Barack Obama to withdraw the nomination of Chuck Hagel as his next defence secretary, the former Republican senator from Nebraska appears virtually certain to be confirmed as Pentagon chief by the full Senate next week.
The fact [...]
via Lobe Log
by Peter Jenkins
As I mentioned in a previous piece, I have been dipping into The Arrogance of Power, written by Senator William Fulbright in 1966. It has been a comforting experience in one respect. The divisions within the US foreign policy community that have been so apparent to European observers [...]
via Lobe Log
by Mitchell Plitnick
As President Barack Obama’s first trip to Israel approaches, one senses desperation from the Ramallah headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. Obama’s scheduled stop in the West Bank has all the trappings of an empty gesture masking the real goal of creating coordination between the President and Israeli [...]
via Lobe Log
by Marsha B. Cohen
Taking advantage of the delay in the vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to the Senate, the spinmeisters of the anti-Hagel propaganda machine have a new charge to hurl at the former Nebraska Senator. Ben Shapiro of Breitbart.com claims that “Senate sources” have told him that Hagel secretly accepted a campaign [...]
via Lobe Log
by Marsha B. Cohen
The hearings to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense seem to have been obsessively focused on Israel, and on the threat Iran poses to Israel, with little interest on the part of most senators on Hagel’s views of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea. Several senators seemed [...]
via Lobe Log
by Jim Lobe
As I noted in the piece published on IPS Friday, “It’s All About Israel,” Israel and the presumed threat posed by Iran to its security dominated Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Thursday. It was the one opportunity Committee members — [...]
via Lobe Log
Neo-Cons Hit Post-Cold War Low
Nearly six weeks after launching their campaign to derail the prospective nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel as Obama’s second-term secretary of defense, hard-line neo-conservatives, led by Bill Kristol, Elliott Abrams, the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, and Washington Post blogger
via Lobe Log
Amb. Chas Freeman (ret.) spoke to a Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) forum on U.S. Grand Strategy — or, in his words “Grand Waffle” — in the Middle East on Capitol Hill yesterday and has graciously agreed to have the text posted on Lobe Log. Readers of the blog are already [...]
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