GregNews

“The four candidates whose names made it on the presidential ballot this year were pre-screened by an unelected Guardian Council composed mostly of Islamic clerics, which also disqualified more than 400 others,” reminds the Wall Street Journal. So, yeah, the Iranian “election” was a predetermined sham long before the final votes were (or rather were [...]

[Washington Post] Senior Obama administration officials are debating how to address a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests from a Somali extremist group, with some in the military advocating strikes against its training camps. But many officials maintain that uncertainty about the intentions of the al-Shabab organization dictates a more patient, nonmilitary approach. Al-Shabab, whose [...]

It took longer than it should have, but the State Department finally decided late last week to drop out of the horror show that is the United Nations conference on racism. The conference scheduled for April in Geneva is the follow-up to the U.N. confab in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 that proved too much [...]

Arthur Herman makes an interesting point: To understand the nature of this challenge, consider that the distance between Baghdad and Tbilisi is barely 578 miles, less than the distance between New York City and Chicago. Iraq and Georgia, both of which have democratic governments, are sandwiched between Iran and Russia, two of the most authoritarian [...]

Some persons are criticizing the U.S. and the West for not being more concerned about Russian “dignity” after the Cold War ended. The argument is that in their shame the vanquished adopt more extreme mentalities and tactics. (If that self-flagellating line sounds familiar it’s probably because it’s a frequent rationale cited by apologists for the [...]