Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners leaving the West to go fight in Syria ... ... those horrified by the images of beheadings and immolation, understanding this process (and more importantly the failure of the intelligence community and state department to make inroads against it) requires one to accept something most Americans cannot: ...
Western media members are currently basking in what to them seems to be a story of economic ... ... economic ‘problem.’ When you look deeper into the multiple foreign-policy, intelligence, and global political layers of this decision, however, you don’t... ... seems in the world of high economic ‘political finance,’ especially in the Middle East when it comes to global energy markets. Saudi Arabia is ‘punishing’...
... highlighting extreme and supposedly ‘abhorrent’ techniques used on terrorist targets after 9/11 to glean greater intelligence and information. Since that release there has been an orgy of oscillating condemnation/hand-wringing with rationalization/chest-beating,... ... than the public incredulity on American torture techniques after 9/11 is the bogus semantics game being played out with the media now in the report’s aftermath. “Yes we did torture. No. Sorry. We did ‘EITs.’ Yes there were measures ...
... exactly who the strikes are aimed against. The only sustained message given in the media, coming from the government, is that America is lending weapons and logistical... ... almost all Americans. But given these strikes are actually being done by the American Intelligence Community, namely the CIA, in an arena where the US has not officially... ... has a long history of generating support for whatever groups it can find across the Middle East, especially if those groups might share a particular hatred for Israel....
... this lack of expectation may be accounted for more by the absence of diligence on the part of Western analysts covering the Middle East than by any miraculous strength of force on the part of ISIS. The ISIS movement in Iraq has been bolstered by the ... ... have documented the problems in emerging from post-conflict Iraq over the last decade, most of us that deal in academia with international relations have long known that it is a tricky and messy path to move from post-conflict to true nation-building....
The Intelligence Community, regardless of regime type, has famously always tried to co-opt and ultimately adopt advancements and evolutions in technology, especially in terms of media. Newspapers, radio, and television have long been appropriated in order to influence, massage, and outright manipulate messages and events important to the national interest. Often the question is not so much whether a country’s intelligence ...