The battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul pits Iraq’s disparate and often divided collection of combat forces (backed by a U.S.-led coalition) against the genocidal fanatics of ISIS. Mosul matters. For Iraqis, Mosul is their second most-populous city — or was — prior to June 2014, when ISIS seized it. The fanatics claim Mosul […]

Violent political Islamists intentionally target irreplaceable archeological and historical sites for sensational obliteration. Internet videos record the ISIS’s calculated destruction of Syria’s city of Palmyra. Prior to Palmyra, Nimrud (northern Iraq) was bulldozed before cameras. Jonah’s Tomb (Jonah and the Whale), located in a mosque in the ISIS occupied city of Mosul, was blown to […]

A sophisticated global sewer system of law firms and banks located in accommodating locales serves the dirty financial demands of corrupt political leaders and their cronies. The so-called Panama Papers, obtained via leak by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, provide an astonishingly detailed look at this mucky system. The ICIJ is a Washington-based non-profit […]

The “safe space” created by political corruption is one reason terrorist organizations can infiltrate, collect intelligence, launch attacks and frankly, continue to exist. This is a global phenomenon, and it isn’t new. In the mid-1990s and after 9/11, western intelligence services found evidence that Balkan criminal gangs had assisted Islamist terrorist networks. In the late […]

Presidential debate moderators would perform a public service if they ask the candidates — in both parties — to publicly state their positions regarding U.S. missile defenses. A missile defense question addresses immediate and emerging national security threats to America and its allies. North Korea has ballistic missiles and threatens to use them. On March […]

An “innocent passage,” the U.S. Navy said on March 4 as the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and its escorts prepared to enter contested waters in the South China Sea. Enter it did, and a day later, over strenuous Chinese objections, the carrier strike group exited the contested zone. The USN often employs the […]

An allied coalition is now waging overt and covert war in Libya. It looks a bit like the so-called coalition attacking ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq. We can’t be certain, for the anti-ISIL coalition has as much political and military operational unity as a spilled box of Crackerjacks. However, verified troop deployments demonstrate protecting […]