Many commentators have raised the apparent inconsistency between the Obama administration’s participation in a multilateral intervention in Libya’s civil war and the lack of any comparable undertaking—so far, at least—in Syria. Inconsistency in international relations is nothing new (or necessarily alarming), yet the issue is worth examining. While there are striking similarities, especially on a […]
I was recently asked to review FPA’s Great Decisions episode on the Arab Spring, featuring columnist Mona Eltahawy and Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center and also featuring short comments from key foreign policy professionals like Madeleine Albright, General Michael Hayden, Robert Malley and Carl Gershman. U.S. Policy and ‘dictatorial […]
Great Decisions: Inside Indonesia (click for Great Decision video preview) To its credit, FPA’s annual world affairs discussion program, Great Decisions, covered the strategically-important, but ambivalent, rising power, Indonesia. With all the focus on China, the BRICs, conflict in the Middle East, Afghanistan and the like, it is easy for the average world citizen, and Americans […]
Guest post by Medair CEO Jim Ingram The current situation in Afghanistan takes the focus away from its long-suffering people. Already struggling in a violent and chronically poor country, the Afghan people are more vulnerable than ever. The need to provide crisis relief – and equally important – sustainable support that will help the Afghan […]
Two days ago, I wrote a brief post about an apparent exodus of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) operatives to neighboring Syria – resulting in an abrupt drop in violence in the capital city of Mosul, and a surprising lull across Nineveh province in the northwest part of the country. Today, at least 60 people […]
It took NATO 46 years and eight months before it intervened with military force to protect innocent civilians from harm and manage a conflict on its periphery. Can we truly expect the Arab League to move any quicker in dealing with problems in its neighborhood? Probably not. When NATO finally heeded the call from those […]
Over the course of the past decade, thousands of civilian contractors, including armed security personnel, have passed through Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though the United States has pulled it troops out of Iraq and is in the process of drawing down in Afghanistan, large numbers of contractors remain in those countries. Still, the number of […]
Noam Chomsky, more prolific as an author of books than op-eds, recently published an essay on HuffPo titled “The Imperial Way.” In it, he argues: In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss [to US primacy]. The region […]
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, Chairman of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation and Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel, Vice-Chair woman of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, hosted an historic gathering of leading scholars on Islam and the West at The Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University, Wednesday, February 8th, 2012. The […]
June 6, 2012. Four months after the post below went online, the MSM (NYT, CBS, New York Post, Fox) is reporting that Representative Darrelll Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigating DOJ’s gunrunning scheme, Fast and Furious, claims the wiretap applications submitted during the course of the operation prove that DOJ officials at the highest levels knew ATF agents were bending, ignoring, and violating US law to move more than 2000 combat-ready weapons across the US border into Mexico. None of the weapons carried tracing devices, and ATF whistleblowers who pressed superiors about the need to have some sort of interdiction strategy in place that would allow them to recover the weapons before they could be used to murder innocent people (Brian Terry) were told to stand down or find another job.
Whether Issa’s latest revelation will revive the official investigation into a government scheme to supply Mexican gangs with weapons that could be traced back to recent sales by US gundealers along the SW border, a move that even the most skeptical mind has trouble believing was designed to do anything but shore up the argument for stricter gun control in the US, is yet to be seen.
Attorney General Eric Holder has told the press that Issa’s Committee is on a ‘witch hunt’ meant to target high-ranking ‘African-Americans’ within the Administration, officials Holder identified more explicitly by adding ‘like me, and the President,’ and it is unlikely the GOP House Leader John Boehner is eager to divert pre-election media coverage from Romney’s singleminded focus on the economy–even though Fast and Furious, with its parallels to Iran-Contra, might well result in the prosecution of admininstration officials for contempt, obstruction of justice, perjury, and multiple violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). Think Ollie North.
In case today’s (June 6th) reports about the importance of wiretap applications linked to Fast and Furious still leave you confused, there’s a repost of my earlier analysis below. Of special interest should be the photocopy of the memo requesting approval for a wiretap signed by Lanny Breuer in March 2010. A DOJ spokesperson says Breuer never scrutized the details, that they were never spelled out to the Head of DOJ’s Criminal Division.
Hmmm…..
Let’s talk wire taps, investigative tools popularized by every cop and criminal show that’s crossed our television screens.
Well, it turns out that ATF agents involved in the gun walking scheme known as Fast and Furious made numerous applications over a significant period of time for the issuance of court orders authorizing wire taps.
Bad news for top cops at DOJ. Like Willy Sutton, who said he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is,” members of the House Oversight Committee have told DOJ they want those wire tap applications because they know that’s where the evidence is–in detailed descriptions of investigative techniques and signatures they believe will point to the involvement of senior DOJ officials.
I recently spoke with Stanford University professor and founding co-editor of the renowned Journal of Democracy Larry Diamond about U.S. democracy promotion. Mr. Diamond authored this year’s Great Decisions article, Promoting Democracy, in which he analyses the evolving significance and use of an American foreign policy mantra. In an update to the article, Mr. Diamond […]
The New York Times reported Sunday that in 2011, for the first time, deaths among civilian contractors working for American companies in Afghanistan outnumbered the deaths of U.S. military personnel in that country. The figure highlights the extent to which modern U.S. military has come to rely on the private sector in carrying out its […]
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