All signs point to France rejoining NATO’s military structure more than forty years after declaring its independence and kicking the alliance headquarters out of Paris. Norman Polmar provides some background: France is expected to soon rejoin NATO’s military command after a 40-year absence. The French government withdrew from the NATO military structure in 1966 (although [...]

More details have been reported on the raid conducted by the Israeli Air Force on a base in Syria on September 6: Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and [...]

Review: ‘The Kingdom’ Watching the trailers for ‘The Kingdom’ over the past several months, I was curious about how the film would portray Saudi Arabia and Saudis. I had personal experience with terrorist bombings of residential compounds in Riyadh and wanted to see how accurate the film might be. The film could have taken the [...]

Blake Hounshell transcribes Secretary of Defense Bob Gates’ comments about U.S. plans vis-a-vis Iran and Syria on yesterday’s “Fox News Sunday.” While Gates was “cagey” in his reply, using the required disclaimer that “All options are on the table,” it’s quite clear that military intervention is simply not in the cards for either set of [...]

The U.S. has quietly acknowledged that Israel did in fact bomb Syrian territory last week — apparently to take out suspected nuclear weapons installations. After days of silence from the Israeli government, American officials confirmed Tuesday that Israeli warplanes launched airstrikes inside Syria last week, the first such attack since 2003. A Defense Department official [...]

Swimming against the tide of sentiment urging rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, a new blue ribbon report urges committing to five more years of military intervention. No, it wasn’t funded by the Project for the New American Century but rather the U.S. Institute for Peace. In a report to be released Sunday, a panel of [...]

Syria claims that Israel bombed them but Israel denies it. Syria accused Israel of bombing its territory on Thursday and warned it could respond, but Israel Radio carried a denial there had been an air strike. The official Syrian news agency said there were no casualties or damage and that Syrian air defenses fired on [...]

A blue ribbon commission chaired by former Supreme Allied Commander James Jones* has concluded that the Iraqi national police are so corrupt that they should be disbanded and recreated from scratch and that the Iraqi army is still more than a year away from being able to operate independently. Karen DeYoung‘s report on A1 of [...]

Tens of thousands of Iraqis who might qualify for asylum in the United States as refugees are unable to do so because of bureaucratic and practical obstacles, Sabrina Tavernise and David Rohde report. Despite a stepped-up commitment from the United States to take in Iraqis who are in danger because they worked for the American [...]

Everyone is picking on Iraqi Prime Minister Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. In the latest insult, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said that, “The progress on the national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned — to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself. We do expect results, as do the Iraqi [...]

Senator John McCain held another conference call with bloggers to discuss the ethics bill before the Congress, which he terms “a sham and a joke,” and the need to persevere in Iraq. I was able to get in a question about both topics. With respect to the first, I inquired as to why the Republicans [...]

I was apparently the only political blogger who didn’t watch the YouTube debates last night. My conscience is clear, though, in that I’m exceedingly unlikely to vote in the Democratic primaries, Virginia doesn’t hold primaries for six and a half months (February 12), transcripts would be available online in short order, and I found the [...]

A front page story in yesterday’s Washington Post has highlighted the need to make plans for evacuating Iraqis if and when we withdraw American forces. The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government [...]

The National Intelligence Estimate reportedly finds that the Salafist Sunni terrorist group al Qaeda has been reconstituted in Shiite theocracy of Iran. One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror [...]

Anne Applebaum captures the quandry of Iraq War policy Out in the world, there are shades of gray. Here inside the Beltway, there are black-and-white solutions. And everybody who is anybody has a plan for Iraq. Hillary Clinton has a three-point plan; Barack Obama has a “move the soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan” plan. House [...]

Michael Gordon and Jim Rutenberg argue in today’s NYT that the Bush administration has consistently exaggerated the role of al Qaeda in Iraq for propaganda purposes. That’s undeniably true. “Al Qaeda” is a powerful buzz word and both the terrorists and politicians play it up for effect. In the case of the administration, they made [...]

In an editorial this morning the New York Times urges an immediate withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, moving them temporarily to Iraqi Kurdistan and from there home. Here’s the meat of their argument: Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s [...]

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, of Bowling Alone fame, finds that “immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities.” John Leo: In the 41 sites Putnam studied in the U.S., he found that the more diverse the [...]

Rioters around the Palestinian territory have looted and ransacked the homes of several Fatah leaders, living or otherwise. Most notably, the late Yasir Arafat’s home was stripped clean, including his Nobel Peace Prize. Enraged Fatah leaders on Saturday accused Hamas militiamen of looting the home of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in Gaza City. [...]

I know, basically, nothing about Iraqi Kurdistan. I honestly doubt that Tom Barnett knows a great deal more. I do know that the English language Iraqi Kurdish blogosphere is moribund. Its last gasps were complaints about suppression of press freedom in Iraqi Kurdistan. And I also know that there’s a different narrative about what’s going [...]

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has announced that Iranian representatives will take part in a regional conference to discuss Iraqi security issues at Sharm el-Sheikh this week. Condi Rice would not rule out talking to the Iranians on yesterday’s This Week and said that, if she talked to her counterpart, she would ask him to “stop [...]

Ali Eteraz of Eteraz.org and a front-page contributor at Dean’s World has written a post at DW proclaiming the situation in Iraq to be without hope: When — it is only a matter of time — we withdraw from Iraq, the Sunnis of the world are going to say “the mujahideen defeated the world’s greatest [...]

The I Coulda Had A V8 Edition OTB Caption ContestTM is now over.

The Washington Post editorial board has a scathing assessment of Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Demascus: HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad. After a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Ms. Pelosi announced [...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria has sparked controversy, not just because it is in defiance of White House foreign policy but because of her decision to wear a head scarf and abaya while visiting a mosque. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mingled with Syrians in a market and made the sign of the cross [...]

Hillary Clinton says she will keep troops in Iraq indefinitely if elected president, albeit with a much more restricted mission. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight Al Qaeda, [...]

Redstate‘s Erick Ericson goes Drudge one better with a RED siren and a big headline quoting Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin saying, I was just wondering, does the military have a plan to, if necessary, to go into Syria to go to the source of any weapons coming from Syria? That are going to [...]

Elliot Cohen reviews The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, a controversial new book by British General Rupert Smith. A key excerpt: [T]he U.S. military still has a long way to go in adapting to the world in which it finds itself. On the walls in our war colleges still [...]

Haaretz Correspondent Akiva Eldar reports that the governments of Israel and Egypt held a “series of secret meetings in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006″ that created a series of “understandings.” An agreement of principles will be signed between the two countries, and following the fulfillment of all commitments, a peace agreement will be [...]

Yoav Fromer expands the Iraq as Humpty Dumpty meme at TNR, perhaps even more soberly: Despite utopian visions of an Arab nation-state with a modernized economy, social justice, and constitutional republicanism, the reality was sobering. Failed central planning, lack of capital, excessive military expenditures, and inadequate education–among other factors–cut short grandiose plans. The result plunged [...]

I watched the speech last night and was unimpressed. Then again, I expected to be. After all, I read dozens of news stories and blog posts about Iraq daily, so by the time these things happen it’s all old hat. So, I decided to wait for the light of day and leave the live-blogging to [...]

The Highlights of the Iraq Strategy Review Slideshow is now available on the White House website in PDF format. It’s a PowerPoint style presentation. The most interesting piece is Slide 7, Key Assumptions: I’m not sure that all the new assumptions are more accurate than the old ones–or even that they are all “assumptions.” I [...]

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Brett McGurk, Director for Iraq, National Security Council held a teleconference with invited bloggers this afternoon on the topic President Bush’s speech tonight on the way forward in Iraq. Following is a summary, not a transcription, of major points unless indicated by use of quotation marks. Snow provided [...]

Beginning Friday, December 15, and continuing through Wednesday, December 20, I will be hosting a blogging colloquium on Iraq entitled “Directions on Iraq: a Blogging Colloquium” at The Glittering Eye. I’m thrilled with those who will be participating. Participants include: John Burgess is a former U. S. foreign service officer who has had two tours [...]

Andrew Sullivan asserts that “Bush’s apparent acceptance of the Blair-Baker position that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to resolving Iraq is the end of neoconservatism in the Bush administration.” I reject both the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has much of anything to do with Iraq and much of the neoconservative foreign policy agenda. Regardless, [...]

President Bush may announce a new plan for Iraq by year’s end. Tony Snow told CNN’s “Larry King Live” that Bush would need to compare Wednesday’s report by the Iraq Study Group with pending studies by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security Council before any policy changes are announced. “We’re hoping to have [...]

Aside from the generic reservations about blue ribbon panels I’ve expressed here and elsewhere over the last several days, I’m working my way through the full text of the Iraq Study Group Report [PDF, HTML] in preparation for a conference call this afternoon with commission members Alan Simpson and William Perry. Below the fold are [...]

Glenn Reynolds, anticipating some weak ideas coming from the Iraq Study Group, has decided to unleash an Army of Davids on the problem to answer the question, “[C]an the blogosphere do better?” If the first installment is any indication, the answer is a decided No. Kevin Drum offers an executive summary: “[T]he only problem with [...]

Two days before his ouster as SECDEF, Don Rumsfeld wrote a memo acknowledging that “what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough” and offering some “Illustrative New Courses of Action” that he felt deserved “serious consideration.” While the early press coverage treats it as if it were [...]

Michael Gordon and Dexter Filkins report that Hezbollah is training al-Sadr’s Shiite militia. A senior American intelligence official said Monday that the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah had been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr. The official said that 1,000 to 2,000 fighters from the Mahdi Army and other [...]

The Iraq Study Group, headed by James Baker, will recommend overtures to Iran and Syria in an effort to solve the crisis. A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated here by a bipartisan commission beginning Monday, urges an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria but [...]

David Ignatius is dishearted by what he terms “The Politics of Murder” in his beloved Lebanon and throughout the Middle East. A disease is eating away at the Middle East. It afflicts the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Lebanese, even the Israelis. It is the idea that the only political determinant in the Arab world is [...]

Thanks to help from their benefactors Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has rearmed to something approaching pre-war levels. Iran is smuggling weapons through Syria to re-arm Lebanese allies Hizballah, despite renewed efforts by United Nations peacekeepers and the Lebanese army to seal off the mountain borders with Syria in the wake of last summer’s war between [...]

What do Belize, Saudi Arabia, Burma, North Korea, and Uzbekistan all have in common? They are among the dozen nations on the US State Department’s list of Tier 3 nations for human trafficking. Slavery, that is. Ambassador John Miller (a former Congressman from Seattle) , the head of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and [...]

Beirut Daily Star opinion editor Michael Young argues that this week’s assassination of Lebanese industry minister Pierre Gemayel, most likely at the behest of the government of Syria, would seem to obviate talk about “engaging” that government as part of the solution to problems in the region. If political “realism” is about interests, then realists [...]

Pierre Gemayel, a third generation leader of Lebanon’s Christian minority, was assassinated this morning. Prominent anti-Syrian Christian politician Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday, his Phalange Party radio station and Lebanon’s official news agency reported. His fatal shooting will certainly heighten the political tension in Lebanon, where the leading Muslim [...]

Michael Gordon reports that senior CENTCOM leaders fear Iraq’s security situation is approaching a point of no return. A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict. A one-page slide shown [...]

Robert Kaplan, who supported the war in Iraq, now thinks the best we can hope for is to avoid a Sunni genocide by dividing the country into “Iranian and Syrian zones of influence.” What we should all fear is a political situation in Washington where a new Congress forces President George W. Bush to redeploy, [...]

North Korea is the eighth state known have tested a nuclear weapon and, with Israel a presumed possessor, brings the total of nuclear states to nine. Since every new state’s acquisition creates more pressure for its potential adversaries to join the club, the folks at Foreign Policy magazine thought this would be a good time [...]

North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon, becoming the eighth open member of the nuclear club. While merely confirming what was already considered a given, this still has enormous consequences, as David Sanger explains: North Korea’s decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan [...]