Free Republic

Washington's Double Vision: al-Qaida, Iran and Global Islamo-fascism Paul Rogers The United States needs to keep the focus on al-Qaida while targeting Iran. It isn't easy. There's no escaping Iraq. Two incidents in recent days bear heavily on the unending conflict in that country. More broadly, they reveal how the United States administration's definition of its "war on terror" (or "long war") reflects entrapment in a way of thinking that requires it constantly to press the real world into the service of a partisan, dangerous, and self-defeating ideology. First, the four coordinated truck-bombings of 14 August 2007 which targeted the...

General David Petraeus, expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad, according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time. Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry, says General Petraeus discussed with him his ambition when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-05. "I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'," Mr Khadim, who now lives in London, said. General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army...