A couple of weeks ago, Al Jazeera published a report that alleged that the former Yemeni government of Ali Abdullah Saleh supported Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),  that it knew about and possibly even coordinating AQAP's 2008 attack on the US embassy in Sanaa and a 2007 attack on Spanish tourists there. The allegation … Continue reading Al Jazeera alleges that AQAP’s new leader may have been a Saleh mole

Shane Harris, who writes for The Daily Beast, wrote a piece that was published Sunday night about being approached to write an anti-US/anti-Israel piece for a conference being held by a group in Iran that might have ties to the Iranian government. It's an interesting read, but totally overblown and all because it has to … Continue reading Examining “Iran Derangement Syndrome,” me at LobeLog

Writing about alleged terrorist deaths means being ready to retract what you've written if, as happens pretty frequently, the report of their death turns out to be wrong. One minute you're talking about Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri kicking the bucket, the next his organization is releasing new recordings that may (but also may not!) be him … Continue reading One terrorist probably dead, another probably not

The Sunday Times published a big bombshell (here's the full text) yesterday, reporting that Edward Snowden's cache of documents has been decrypted by Russian and Chinese officials, and that MI6 agents have actually been pulled out of ongoing operations because their identities are now compromised. It's a story that, if it's true, has enormous ramifications … Continue reading The Sunday Times’ Snowden story has some…problems

Remember how Mike Allen and Evan Thomas told us that Rick Perry looked like a blithering idiot in the 2012 GOP primary debates because he was tripping on painkillers for his bad back the whole time? Well, uh, is he back on the pills? Perry said that he was “stunned” and claimed that the president, … Continue reading Is Rick Perry back on painkillers?

For a short while over the weekend it looked like we might all be witness to the rarest of things, an actual case of justice being done. Omar al-Bashir, who's been "president" of Sudan since 1989 (after 26 years, it's probably safe to call him a dictator, yes?), was legally detained while attending the African … Continue reading Sudan’s Bashir free to commit more war crimes

Magna Carta is 800 years old today. On June 15, 1215, King John and a group of rebellious English barons reached agreement on a charter that limited royal authority with respect to the nobility in exchange for the nobles swearing their loyalty to the crown and ending their rebellion. In its original form, the charter … Continue reading Happy, uh, Magna Carta Day (?)

It should go without saying that this is a good idea: The House of Representatives has unanimously approved an amendment to the U.S. military budget, proposed by Conyers and Florida Republican Ted Yoho, banning support and training for "the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary militia 'Azov Battalion.'" Azov was set up in May 2014 to fight pro-Russian separatists … Continue reading BREAKING: Congress elects not to train and fund Neo-Nazis

I won't pretend to understand the implications of the massive hack of OPM, particularly not when the government's story about what actually got hacked seems to be changing from day to day, but they seem to be pretty terrible. The latest story is that a second hack managed to compromise security clearance paperwork, which means … Continue reading Too big to govern

Fareed Zakaria had that whole dust-up a while back (well, and a while before that too) on account of how so much of what he his interns write tends to be straight jacked from some other, less famous writer. In all fairness RE: my headline above, I obviously have no way of knowing whether or … Continue reading Maybe Fareed should go back to plagiarizing