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The war in Ukraine is at a stalemate, but that doesn’t mean it’s not changing. General David Petraeus predicts the war will look different this year with significant offensives likely staged by the two sides. Bergen: Who’s winning the war? Petraeus: It is not Russia. Russia has, after all, lost the Battles of Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv; failed to take the rest of Ukraine’s southern coast (not even getting through Mykolaiv, much less to the major port at Odesa). It has lost what it had gained in Kharkiv province. And it has had to withdraw its only forces west...

On CNN, Peter Bergen stated that the terrorist bombings in Boston was "likely right-wing" extremists. Here's the quote: "One of the things that I'd be looking at, once the device, if it is a device, is found, what kind of explosives were used. If it, for instance, if it was hydrogen peroxide, sort of a signature of al Qaeda. If it was more conventional explosives, which are much harder to get hold of now, it might be some other kind of right wing extremists... "We've also seen other extremist groups, right wing groups, attacking, for instance, trying to attack the...

The attacks on US targets culminating in the September 11 suicide hijackings were only a fraction of the onslaught planned by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, it emerged yesterday. Over the past three years, US intelligence detected plots against US embassies in 14 countries, mostly in Asia and Africa, and there were over 600 more "credible threats" of attacks. Some were thwarted by arrests or stepped up security. Others appear to have been suspended or may still be pending. The global extent of al-Qaida's terrorist ambitions is revealed in a new book by Peter Bergen, CNN's terrorism analyst, who interviewed ...

ISIS, perhaps more than any other multinational terrorist group, has become known for its ability to attract Westerners away from their comfortable lives in prosperous countries and into the dangerous world of violent jihad. Peter Bergen, who was the first journalist to interview Osama bin Laden on television and has written five books on terrorism, explored what attracts Americans to radical Islam in his new book, "The United States of Jihad." There's no one-size-fits-all explanation for why Westerners join foreign terrorist organization, nor is there one common profile for an American jihadist. "Each case is a little bit different, and...

As the President continues to struggle with a strategy regarding what we should do about ISIS, one of the key questions being batted around is how to define the precise level of threat which ISIS poses to the United States. It’s a valid question, actually, so it was with interest that I followed a link on this subject to an opinion piece by CNN’s national security analyst, Peter Bergen. The title gives a fairly solid summary of the contents. ISIS threat to U.S. mostly hype. ISIS has Americans worried. Two-thirds of those surveyed in a recent Pew Research poll said...

Without mentioning reports that the man accused of shooting up a Jewish Community Center over the weekend was apparently a fan of the left's Max Blumenthal, CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen exploited the murders to claim the American Right is more deadly than jihadists.

[UPDATE BELOW] CNN's national security analyst Peter Bergen twice suggested that "right-wing extremists" could be behind Monday's Boston Marathon bombings. Yet over an hour later, CNN reported that Boston Police were not holding anyone in custody as a suspect for the attack.

On July 25, Najibullah Zazi, a lanky man in his mid-twenties, walked into the Beauty Supply Warehouse in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. The visit was captured on a store video camera. Wearing a baseball cap and pushing a shopping cart, Zazi appeared to be just another suburban guy.Of course, not many suburban guys buy six bottles of Clairoxide hair bleach, as Zazi did on this shopping trip--or return a month later to buy a dozen bottles of "Ms. K Liquid," a peroxide-based product. Aware that these were hardly the typical purchases of a heavily bearded, dark-haired young...

A FEW days before the presidential election, the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, told a group of intelligence officials that the new administration could well be tested by a terrorist attack on the homeland in its first year in office. “The World Trade Center was attacked in the first year of President Clinton, and the second attack was in the first year of President Bush,” he said. President-elect Barack Obama made a similar observation when he told “60 Minutes” that it was important to get a national security team in place “because transition periods are potentially times of vulnerability...

WASHINGTON - Osama Bin Laden talks tough, but other mujahedeen laughed at him in Afghanistan because he would get scared and bolt when under fire, a new documentary reveals. "When Bin Laden used to hear the explosions, he used to jump. He used to run away," his longtime friend Hutaifa Azzam says on "CNN Presents: In the Footsteps of Bin Laden." "I still remember that me, and my elder and younger brothers, we used to laugh," says Azzam, the son of Bin Laden's mentor in radical Islam, Abdullah Azzam. Abdullah Azzam and Bin Laden jointly created a mujahedeen support organization...

Weekend Talk Show *Preview* for 7/8 and 7/9/06 (not the live thread)The main message is the Sunday Shows and message 1 will be the Saturday Shows,  then I'll post the ping list.  I've changed the format as a test this week and put the links to articles and background on the guests in with their listing in the shows.  It struck me that it might have been getting less helpful to have to jump back and forth.  Let me know which format works better.ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: Bush is all wrong about (Korea/Iraq/Immigration) and even Republicans think soNo...

Excerpt from interview with Peter Bergen, author of "The Osama Bin Laden I know: Inside the secret world of Osama Bin Laden" by Frank Stasio on National Public Radio. Peter Bergen: "(Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden) had sort of philisophical differences and they competed for money ... they really only came together as the Iraq war heated up and Zarqawi never swore an oath of allegiance to Bin Laden until 2004, two years into the war. So, Colin Powell had, at his famous U.N. presentation, said Zarqawi was the best evidence for this sort of Al Qaeda/Saddam Hussein...

Osama bin Laden has vowed never to be taken alive and once gave his bodyguard a pistol with two bullets to shoot him if it appeared that he might be caught, according to a new book of interviews with people who know the al Qaeda leader. The book excerpted in the new issue of Vanity Fair, "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History" by CNN security expert Peter Bergen, also says bin Laden intensely dislikes deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. After the 2001 attacks on the United States carried out by al Qaeda the Bush administration made much...

Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands Al-Qaida may 'reward' American president with strike aimed at keeping him in office, senior intelligence man says Julian Borger in Washington Saturday June 19, 2004 The Guardian A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands. Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts...

An "anonymous" CIA officer who was demoted from the position of leading the tracking of Osama bin Laden, lashed out in a new book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism, at both the administrations of Presidents Clinton and Bush. But in jumping on the book's criticism of going to war in Iraq, the networks on Wednesday night concentrated their stories on his attacks on the policies pursued by President Bush. Only NBC's Andrea Mitchell gave a sentence to his criticism of how the Clinton administration didn't take seriously the hunt for Osama bin Laden and...