This is a tale about a vote, a strike, and a sleight of hand.
India, Iran, & the United States
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Middle East & North Africa
As U.S. Energy Sources Decline, Russian and Caspian Sea Oil Won’t Solve Supply Problem
The United States now stands at a critical juncture in the evolution of its energy policy, particularly with respect to petroleum and natural gas consumption. The demand for energy in this country has been rising steadily over the past years as a result of continued economic growth and the vital role of air, ground, and sea transportation in all aspects of economic activity. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), total energy use in the United States grew by 16 percent between 1990 and 2002, and is projected to grow by another 35 percent between 2002 and 2025. At the same time, many other countries, both developed and developing, have also experienced an increased need for energy, pushing total world energy use from 348 quadrillion BTUs in 1990 to a projected 645 quadrillion BTUs in 2025, an increase of 85 percent.
The U.S. and the Israeli-Syrian Peace Process
Lebanon: Key Battleground for Middle East Policy
Key Points
A Constitution of Trouble
Iraqi negotiators reached a compromise on the constitution on Tuesday October 11, 2005 bringing the support of at least one major Sunni group before Saturday’s vote. But the supposed compromise merely kicks the can down the road, leaving the real questions at hand untouched.
September Mornings in Maryland & Iraq
In the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 17, 1862, a division of Confederate soldiers moved into place just south of a cornfield near where the Hagerstown Pike runs past a white, clapboard church on its way to the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Northeast of the Confederates, Union Major General Joseph Mansfield was getting his XII Corps into line facing a small forest. The lesson of what happened within the shadows cast by those trees–known in thousands of military histories as simply “the East Wood”–is something the Bush Administration is letting the nation re-discover these days.
Bush Again Resorts to Fear-Mongering to Justify Iraq Policy
President George W. Bush’s October 6 address at the National Endowment for Democracy illustrated his administration’s increasingly desperate effort to justify the increasingly unpopular U.S. war in Iraq. The speech focused upon the Bush administration’s claim that the Iraqi insurgency against U.S. occupation forces somehow constituted a grave threat to the security of the United States and the entire civilized world.
The "New" Iraq: Discovery or Invention
Random thought: Columbus Day is here again.
How Basra Slipped Out of Control: Portent in the Shiite South?
To understand just how tenuous the U.S. position in Iraq is at the moment, we have only to look at the way Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, in the solidly Shiite South slipped out of the control of occupation forces last month.