Politicians talk about "witch hunts" so often that the occult has almost become cliche in American politics. But in Arizona, there's at least one candidate on the ballot who takes sorcery very seriously.
Tehran’s growing influence in Iraq is no accident, newly declassified interrogation transcripts show
Enough with the Randstanding already.
The new year is less than a week old, and so far, the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS is reporting there have been no strikes against the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq. A single strike on New Year's Eve day near Bayji, Iraq was the last such attack. The four days with no strikes matches a previous…
Was Samuel Alito worth the Iraq war?
In France, all right-thinking people know instinctively what the pensée unique is—the socially acceptable view on any subject that ensures a Parisian won’t get axed from the better dinner parties and weekends in Normandy. The Democratic party, which remains a more coherent concatenation than the…
Iraqi prime minister Haider Al-Abadi took to Twitter on October 13 to dispute rumors that his forces were mobilizing to take over areas under the control of Iraqi Kurds, particularly the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. “The fake news being spread has a deplorable agenda behind it,” he wrote. As with most…
Kurds in northern Iraq control their own land, maintain their own military, and share a common culture and language. They also have an overwhelming desire to separate from Iraq and become an independent state. But can a de facto nation become a real country if it isn’t recognized by the diplomatic…
President Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan shows considerable reflection among the president and his top advisers on many military questions but deep confusion on the issues of “nation-building” and democracy.
President Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan shows considerable reflection among the president and his top advisers on many military questions but deep confusion on the issues of “nation-building” and democracy.
Two U.S. Army soldiers were killed and another five injured in Iraq Sunday while "conducting combat operations" according to a U.S. Central Command news release. A CENTCOM official told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the Army artillery unit was engaged in a "counter-fire mission against an ISIS mortar…
In the run-up to the Iraq War, a Bush White House official explained to me that 9/11 had changed the way we read national security intelligence. There was a relaxed way to read intelligence, he said, and there was an alarmed way to read intelligence. Sept. 11 proved that we had to read intelligence…
The victorious Iraqi troops who greeted us this winter in the newly liberated town of Bartalla on the edge of Mosul seemed so different from those I remembered from the mid to late 2000s that it was hard to believe they came from the same country. These guys were, to put it in American military…
During the Bush administration, the popular protest refrain was “Bush lied, people died." It's true that a major justification for the Iraq war was eliminating Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of so-called weapons of mass destruction, a catch-all phrase for biological and chemical weapons, as well as…
Character is often revealed in seemingly small gestures. Amid all the speculation about how retired Marine general James Mattis will manage to lead the behemoth called the Department of Defense, one personal experience I had a decade ago as a young staffer in the office of the Secretary of Defense…
At the Washington Free Beacon, Aaron MacLean writes about the false narratives about the state of the economy and the world under the Obama administration. MacLean suggests the alternative reality presented by Obama and propagated by a compliant media led the country to revolt against it and reject…
Retired Marine general John Kelly is Donald Trump's leading pick to become the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, reports Eliana Johnson at Politico:
Los Angeles
Wednesday night, NBC hosted a presidential forum on issues related to national security and the military where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were interviewed and took selected questions from military personnel in attendance. Today host Matt Lauer served as moderator.
Writing at the Federalist, Susan Kristol reflects on the sacrifices made by the parents of those members of the military deployed into or killed in combat—and suggests Donald Trump should have responded much more empathetically to the appearance of two such parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, at the…
As the 2016 Republican National Convention began, GOP chairman Reince Priebus spoke with confidence about the coming transformation of presumptive nominee Donald Trump. "He knows the pivot is important," Priebus said. "He has been better and I think he's going to be great moving forward." Priebus…
The two most powerful Republicans in Congress say the memory of Army captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American soldier who died in Iraq in 2004, should be honored and valued—but both stopped short of criticizing the GOP nominee for president, Donald Trump. Khan's parents spoke out against Trump's…
On Sunday, 60 Minutes aired a joint interview with Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, Mike Pence. After Trump suggested that as president he would declare war on ISIS, Lesley Stahl noted, "but we did go to war, if you remember. We went to Iraq."
Donald Trump claimed last week that Saddam Hussein, the deceased Iraqi dictator who was deposed from power more than a decade ago, was "so good" at killing terrorists. The presumptive Republican nominee's point was to suggest Iraq would be better off as it was prior to the 2003 invasion by…
The February 13 debate in South Carolina provided a clarifying moment for this year's GOP presidential race. Donald Trump claimed that the administration of George W. Bush had engaged in a massive conspiracy to mislead the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "They lied," Trump…
It was a wild and woolly debate, with lots of arguments worth commenting on and exchanges worth evaluating. But as is sometimes the case in these debates, only one statement really mattered.
An ambitious liberal Democrat — some even call him a socialist — is knocking Hillary Clinton for her past support of the Iraq War. His name is not Barack Obama, and the year is not 2008. It's Bernie Sanders, it's 2016, and the presidential campaign's only contender to have voted for the use of…
Ahmed Chalabi died Tuesday, at his home in Baghdad, without many honors. He had egged on the U.S. invasion in 2003 by circulating stories of Saddam’s nuclear facilities, wanting to be president of his old country. But when none were found, he became infamous in his new one instead.
Lincoln Chafee’s abortive presidential candidacy was treated by many as a joke, but the focus of the former governor and senator’s campaign was deadly serious: His was the stridently anti-war candidacy.
It’s no secret that Donald Trump has contempt for Jeb Bush, some of it well-earned. And Trump’s recent remarks pointing out that “the World Trade Center came down” during George W. Bush’s “reign” have been rightly seen as a way to needle and flummox brother Jeb. In that, he’s been quite successful,…
Jeb Bush delivered a thoughtful and clear-eyed speech on Tuesday about the threat posed by ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism. It was a forward-looking speech that offered a compelling strategy to deal with this growing threat (something we haven’t heard from Hillary Clinton).
A new ad from Veterans Against the Deal features the father of U.S. Army specialist Clay Farr, who was killed by an Iranian bomb in Iraq in 2006. In the 60-second spot, Patrick Farr describes the day he learned of his son's death and expresses his opposition to a deal that will reward the regime…
Iraq veteran Robert Bartlett appeared with Megyn Kelly of Fox News last night to discuss his opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran. Bartlett was severely wounded in 2005 in Iraq by an Iranian bomb, which also killed or injured several of his friends. Watch the interview below:
A new ad from the group Veterans Against the Deal features retired Army staff sergeant Robert Bartlett, who in 2005 was badly injured while serving in Iraq. The supplier of the bomb that "cut me in half, from the left corner of my temple to through my jaw" was the regime in Iran. In the ad,…
Is the world better off than it was eight years ago?
Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said President Obama is "not providing the resources" to defeat the Islamic State in and that United States ought to send "a few thousand more" troops into Iraq to combat the terrorist group in that country.
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said America should focus on the current challenges and problems faced in Iraq. Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation, Walker responded to a question from Bob Schieffer about potential 2016 rival Jeb Bush's difficult time answering questions about the 2003 invasion of…
For Jeb Bush and the issue of the Iraq War, the third time was the charm—but you wouldn’t know that from reading the headlines. Bush, the former Florida governor and brother of the president who took American troops into Iraq in 2003, had a difficult time explaining his position on the war this…
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has stumbled in his effort to answer questions about the wisdom of invading Iraq, given intelligence failures revealed since his brother George W. Bush launched the war in 2003. Members of the media have taken the opportunity to ask other would-be or…
New Jersey governor Chris Christie told CNN's Jake Tapper Tuesday that it "wasn't" the right decision to go to war in Iraq, given what we know now about the intelligence failures leading up to the invasion in 2003.
Last week, I wrote about how the professional left was attacking Clint Eastwood's new biopic about Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. American Sniper is almost exclusively about the struggles and heroism of one remarkable man who fought in the Iraq war, but the film's critics can't seem to forgive the…
Can the United States maintain a "limited" military force in Iraq to stop the Islamist militants targeting ethnic minorities in that country? At Politico, Philip Ewing notes how difficult that strategy may be for President Barack Obama:
Walter B. Jones, the longtime Republican congressman from North Carolina, is facing a tough primary challenge. Jones has made his anti-war stance central to his political identity, and Peter Hamby of CNN reports on how Jones is being challenged on his position on Iraq and Afghanistan:
Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina occupies a strange place on the spectrum of American politics. An 18-year House veteran from the conservative coast, Jones is a pro-life former Democrat, raised Baptist but a Catholic convert. The 70-year-old Republican’s biggest claim to fame may have come in…
Two years after the self-immolation of a street vendor protesting police corruption in Tunisia, the promise of the Arab Spring remains unrealized. Instead of ushering in an era of stable self-determination, much of the Middle East remains in disarray. Syria is in flames, Egypt almost ungovernable.…
Former secretary of state Colin Powell, who served through George W. Bush's first term, will appear on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, January 13, to reportedly make the case for Chuck Hagel to head the defense department. Powell has been critical of Republicans in recent years and made…
We interrupt President Obama’s celebration of keeping a campaign promise to bring you news from Iraq, where a political crisis has been unfolding since just hours after Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta departed on Thursday. The ethno-sectarian settlement achieved at such cost to Iraqis and…
...I highly recommend starting with this Vanity Fair piece where Hitchens confronts the consequences of his support for the Iraq War, and in the process pens a moving tribute to a fallen soldier:
George Will: "Newt Gingrich commits a capital crime"