The polling industry must be strengthened, not discredited. It remains crucial in an era in which markets are hypersensitive to political outcomes.
The polling industry must be strengthened, not discredited. It remains crucial in an era in which markets are hypersensitive to political outcomes.
The Clinton campaign linked hacks of the DNC to Russia. Snowden took refuge in Moscow. And the Obama administration has been linked to hacking of close allies.
In the eyes of Russia, Iran, American allies and many Americans themselves, the United States is no longer guiding foreign policy in the Middle East.
Russian resurgence has planted seeds of conflict both within individual NATO members, as well as between different geographic areas of the alliance.
Many in the Middle East are curious how the next American president will deal with the major unresolved issues in their tumultuous, unsettled region.
“The United States is struggling to confront an uptick in threats from the world’s newest jihadist hot spot with limited intelligence and few partners to help as the Obama administration weighs how to keep Islamic extremists in North Africa from jeopardizing national security without launching war. We want to put up a map here and […]
When you’re right, you’re right. I’m talking about Fast and Furious, the gun-walking operation the US Department of Justice used (illegally if the Export Control Act still carries any weight) to funnel more than 2000 fully operational combat-ready guns and other serious weaponry across the US-Mexico border and into the hands of cartel gang members.
The ‘covert op’ nobody in Washington knew anything about but which, nevertheless, allowed cartel assassins to use these weapons to gun down hundreds of innocent people, including US law enforcement agents like Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Almost ten months ago, in this very blog (Brian Terry, Jesus Diaz, Dakota Meyer: Justice in 2012?), this writer suggested that, the nearer we came to the election, the less would be said, and done, in regard to the plight of the Terry Family and their hope that, in the case of Fast and Furious, ‘justice would be done.’
Last weekend, Hillary Clinton traveled to Norway for two days as part of her ongoing trip to Scandinavia, the Caucuses, and Turkey. In Norway, she first went to Oslo, where she had dinner with Norwegian Foreign Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. He said to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, “I’ve spoken with her many times, but we […]
2011 has been a year filled with change, reform, progress and challenges across the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco included. As we anticipate what 2012 holds for the region, here’s a recap of key moments in 2011 for Morocco: February 20 – Thousands demonstrated across Morocco in solidarity with protesters in Egypt and Tunisia, […]
It’s called a ‘murder-for-hire’ sting, a standard law enforcement ploy designed to help the criminal find the very worst in his nature and act on it. But sting operations come with their own risks as well as rewards—and attorneys know that ‘entrapment’ can be a strong defense. . .
Informants are like sharks, scouring the underworld for opportunities and targets the feds can use as springboards to career-making cases. It’s the informant’s job to find two sticks (agent and opportunity), to rub them together vigorously, and to blow gently on the sparks of criminal enterprise.
Think about this as well….the ‘downpayment’ for the ‘hit,’ the100k wired to the US undercover bank account is enough to trigger a case for conspiracy, but it still doesn’t prove that the Iranian government was driving the bus. To do that, US authorities must establish a link between the owner of the account in the UAE — or the owner/s of an account held by an international financial institution with correspondent branches/banks around the world — and the government of Iran.
This is a critical point–one that could defuse the Obama Administration’s claim that ‘senior officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government’ were tied to the assassination plot and challenge the call of senior US officials for alterations to current foreign policy, in the US and abroad, toward Iran. If US authorities cannot prove that this was something more than a plot formulated by a small group of non-state actors, the President, the Secretary of State, DEA and the FBI have some explaining to do. . .
Ok. Now we’re into it. Administration top dogs have thrown ATF Director Ken Melson and US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke under the truck.In firefighting, they call it a ‘controlled burn,’ torching a perimeter of just enough man-made flame to meet and beat the advance of a wildfire impervious to less-drastic solutions.
Good luck, gentlemen.
The House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the DOJ/ATF gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious is roaring through the halls of Congress, and despite DOJ’s efforts to spin the story every which way but up, Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) are on a trail insiders whisper may lead investigators all the way to the top.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s reminded the world of the unchanged US support for Morocco’s “serious, realistic, and credible” compromise autonomy proposal to end the three-decades old Western Sahara conflict. Days after, two more countries officially withdrew recognition and support of the “Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic” (SADR) “the pseudo country” run […]
This is the new face of global organized crime–a criminal smorgasbord in which players energized by shifting motives still cooperate at intersections in their operational journeys, ‘hooking up’ for a day or an extra dollar when there are benefits all around.
Sometimes, identifying, deciphering and tracking US foreign policy for a particular issue can be exercise in complexity, if not futility. For example, what is the US position on the best way to resolve the Western Sahara conflict, arguably one of the biggest hurdles to progress and stability in North Africa? Well, in an interview last […]
After noting the U.S. response to the Haiti earthquake on this blog, I thought it would be good to follow-up and note that the U.S. response is continuing, even as Haiti no longer dominates the headlines. This report in The Washington Post describes the visit to Haiti yesterday by former Presidents Clinton and Bush: Former […]