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The Bush administration’s assertion that 5 small Iranian boats confronted big, well-armed US ships in the Straits of Hormuz and threatened to blow up the American vessels is looking more and more like a serious error if not a Republican Party fabrication. The episode featured prominently in the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, according […]

The USG Open Source Center provides translated excerpts from Pakistani editorials reacting to Sunday’s New York Times story on discussions by VP Dick Cheney with others in the administration about widening the role in Pakistan of the Central Intelligence Agency and giving it permission to carry out paramilitary strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas […]

Zogby gave permission to reprint the below, just in: ‘ UTICA, New York—Democrat Barack Obamas dramatic post-Iowa momentum has come to full bloom in the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby New Hampshire daily tracking poll, rocketing to a 10-point lead over rival Hillary Clinton and a 20-point over Edwards. In New Hampshires Republican primary race, the survey shows Arizonas […]

That the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps coast guard would play chicken with the US Navy is not that surprising. Enemies at sea often taunt one another, and I think there were similar feints by Soviet subs in the old days. (A kind reader pointed out that it even happened more recently with China.) What is […]

A review by Tom Reiss of my book, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East has appeared in The New York Times.

Claire Potter blogged one of my panels at the American Historical Association meeting. (Scroll down). HNN also covered the session (scroll down) and even gives video of myself, Bruce Cumings and Marilyn Young.

The Justice Department is going to investigate the destruction of videotapes of the interrogation of prisoners in US custody that showed torture. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi keeps asking what Bush has done that is impeachable. Shredding the constitution should count, and if that doesn’t then this should. Tom Engelhardt on how Bush took […]

After having celebrated New Year’s Eve in style for the first time since 2002, Baghdad awoke on the first of the year to bad news. In a signature tactic of the Salafi Jihadis in Iraq, a suicide bomber detonated his payload at a Shiite commemoration for the departed in Zayouna, a mixed neighborhood of east […]

Pakistan’s electoral commission announced Tuesday that the elections scheduled for January 8 will be postponed until February. The Pakistan People’s Party objected strenuously to the delay, and threatened to take to the streets with popular protests. Meanwhile, the caretaker government is furiously backtracking on its earlier claims that Benazir Bhutto died of a concussion. The […]