Driving the conversation: President Obama released his deficit reduction plan on Monday, which would reduce the national debt by $3 trillion over ten years through a variety of tax hikes, superficial cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and by incorporating savings gleaned from drawing down America’s military presence in the Middle East. Taxes: As he is wont to do, Obama called on Congress – specifically, the supercommittee – to reform the tax code. The only tax changes included in the president’s plan are – surprise! – tax hikes. Those will include …
A flurry of newspaper articles reporting that the Obama Administration may decide to disregard the advice of its military commanders and reduce the U.S. military presence in Iraq to less than 4,000 troops by the end of the year prompted 42 distinguished American foreign policy experts to write an open letter to President Obama on September 15, urging him to reconsider. The letter, published on the website of the Foreign Policy Initiative, stated that the signers were “gravely concerned” about the risks entailed in retaining such a small force: Failure …
The Obama Administration may unwisely decide to ignore the advice of its own military advisers and cut the number of U.S. troops in Iraq down to 3,000 by the end of the year, according to press reports. Iraqi and U.S. officials are currently negotiating behind the scenes about how many of the roughly 45,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq will be allowed to stay past the December 31 deadline set by the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement. Senior commanders were reportedly “livid” at the increased risks that will be imposed …
Iraq’s fragile peace was shattered on Monday by a coordinated campaign of terrorist attacks in 17 cities that targeted Iraqi security forces and civilians, killing more than 70 people. The attacks occurred almost simultaneously in Baghdad, Karbala, Kut, Kirkuk, Najaf, and other locations and involved suicide bombers, car bombs, and armed attacks on government facilities, police, and Iraqi army posts. Although no group claimed responsibility, early signs point to al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has mounted many similar attacks in the past. An Iraqi military official cited the attacks as “evidence …
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) introduced legislation to raise the debt ceiling this week. In evaluating his plans for future government spending, it becomes clear that budgeting for prudent defense is considered just another line item. While Americans intuitively know that national security is unlike any other category of federal spending, it is often treated with inherent bias through insider budgeting methods. Congress tends to selectively ignore what are called “baselines” used for comparing different spending proposals. This is convenient if a Member of Congress wants to generate more …
As the Obama Administration conducts its military withdrawal from Iraq, Iran has upped its involvement in the region, emphasizing how vulnerable American troops are now that forces are diminishing. News broke this week that Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces carried out cross-border military operations in Iraq against guerrillas of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) less than a week after Iran warned that it reserved the right to attack the bases of the rebel Kurdish group. PJAK is an Iranian–Kurdish separatist group that carries out attacks in Iran …
Last week, Waad Ramadan Alwan and his cousin Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The men, both Iraqi refugees, had been allegedly picking up machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades from a nearby storage facility and delivering them to be shipped to al-Qaeda. It seems that the men never had any plans to attack targets in the United States, keeping them from being added to the ranks of the 39 publically known terrorist plots against the United States since 9/11. However, the incident does serve as a chilling …
The surprise return of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to Iraq on Wednesday is a sign of rising Iranian influence and diminishing American political clout in Iraq. The triumphant homecoming of the fiery anti-American leader, who incited two bloody uprisings against U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion, could also foreshadow growing Iraqi political instability. The sad fact is that the rabble-rousing Islamist, who fled to Iran after his Mahdi militia was crushed, has now returned to Iraq more powerful than ever. His followers won 39 seats in last year’s parliamentary …
The illegal revelation of more than 250,000 State Department documents last weekend by the WikiLeaks organization is a damaging setback for U.S. foreign policy that will strain relations with important U.S. allies, undermine U.S. national security interests, and complicate international cooperation on many issues, including the war on terrorism. This third installment of stolen documents follows previous WikiLeaks document dumps on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like the two previous actions, this reckless release of the diplomatic cables erodes trust in the U.S. government and puts at risk American …
Buried in the WikiLeaks avalanche of documents related to the war in Iraq are various reports about the discovery of chemical weapons caches inside Iraq—reports which contradict the revisionist narrative about the genesis of the war. Scattered throughout the roughly 392,000 documents illegally published by WikiLeaks are accounts of U.S., coalition and Iraqi forces recovering chemical munitions left behind by Saddam Hussein’s overthrown regime. While the chemical munitions recovered appeared to be manufactured before the 1991 Gulf War, after which Iraqi forces were required to surrender and destroy their illegal …
