On Tuesday, September 7, HBO airs the documentary My Trip to Al-Qaeda by Alex Gibney and Lawrence Wright. It should not be missed. Wright’s most recent book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, won the ’07 Pulitzer for General Non-Fiction. It’s the best book yet about the complexities surrounding that tragedy, and [...]

Everyone is spinning the Iraq mission’s so-called end but no one seems willing quite to accept defeat. Republicans are complaining that the president didn’t mention George W. Bush often enough in his speech announcing the end of combat operations. In fact, he did, quite a bit, and in an over-generous way, most sane people agree. [...]

In his speech to the nation Tuesday night, President Obama essentially claimed to be ending the U.S. war in Iraq, and preparing to wind up U.S. domination in Afghanistan and by implication, elsewhere. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taking a look at Iraq alone, the violence that the United States illegally initiated seven [...]

On August 31, 2010, President Obama declared the “end of our combat mission in Iraq.” President Obama said, “Like all Americans, I am awed by [U.S. troops'] sacrifice, and by the sacrifices of their families.” What were those “sacrifices”? As I reflect on my time as a Marine in Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, I [...]

President Obama, speaking from the Oval Office, told the nation (and the world) that it is time to “turn the page” now that U.S. combat operations have officially ended in Iraq. And while he talked about what we learned from the last “page,” the President missed an important part of the Iraq war’s lesson. If [...]

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour spent “a couple of hours” with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to talk about politics and friendships, the essential content of his recently released memoir, “A Journey.” “His book is a personal reflection of the many relationships he had with presidents, prime ministers and even princesses, like Diana,” said Amanpour in [...]

The emotion that grips me this morning, after watching President Obama’s speech last night and listening to the commentary about the “end of our combat mission in Iraq,” is a deep sadness. Even in the Oval Office speech last night, the mission of the war in Iraq still wasn’t made clear — and it never [...]

President Obama’s announcement last night that America’s combat troops in Iraq are coming home is good news indeed. After the tragic loss of 4,400 lives of some of our most courageous citizens and $1 trillion in spending that could have been used here at home, our seven and one-half years of agony from a war [...]

When embedded reporters dutifully reported the last “combat” troops had left Iraq it looked as if President Obama was going to fall into the same trap as President Bush. On May 1, 2003, wearing a jump suit, President Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq. It had been the title of a short propaganda film in [...]

Mission accomplished? The Iraq war did more than anything to alienate the Atlantic powers from the rest of the world today the Iraq war was declared over by Barack Obama. As his troops return home, Iraqis are marginally freer than in 2003, and considerably less secure. Two million remain abroad as refugees from seven years [...]