U.S. Policy

There is a popular joke in Baghdad about a man who buys a black-and-white television set. He takes the set home, plugs it in, but it doesn't work. So he runs back to the market and confronts the merchant. "You've sold me a defective television," he complains, "I plug it

On March 13, a number of U.S. senators, policymakers, and professors gathered at a conference dedicated to criticizing George Bush's policy toward Iran. The annual American Iranian Council gala is subsidized by a dozen oil companies, and sponsored by those same universities -- Columbia and Georgetown -- whose faculty so

Israelis and Palestinians are fighting an escalating war with no end in sight. The more force is used, the less secure Israelis become. The more violence is employed as a tactic, the more pain Palestinians suffer and the less likely they are to see Israeli occupation end any time soon

As the Bush administration seeks to define its policy on the Middle East, Libya has emerged in the high drama of the U.S. war against terrorism. A Scottish appeals court yesterday upheld the conviction of former Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Baset al-Megrahi for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight

On March 13, 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz delivered The Washington Institute's Fifth Annual Turgut Ozal Memorial Lecture. Following is a full transcript of his presentation, as delivered. Read a summary of his remarks. Rob [Satloff, Executive Director of the Washington Institute], I was all set to thank

While publicly stressing Saudi Arabia's cooperation and shared concern regarding terrorist financing, U.S. treasury secretary Paul O'Neill held private consultations this past week in Riyadh with Saudi officials and businessmen regarding specific Saudi organizations and individuals suspected of financing terrorist activities. Promising to find clear-cut cases, O'Neill reassured his hosts

On March 6, Lorne W. Craner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, will testify before Congress on the State Department's just-released "2001 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" covering 195 countries. How the reports characterize human rights and influence U.S. policy in the Arab world is

On 7 October, the United States began military operations against the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan and the Taliban regime that had given them shelter. The impact of the US operation upon the Taliban could not be clearer. Just two months after the commencement of bombing, Northern Alliance forces entered

After US President George W. Bush declared Iran part of an "Axis of Evil," many European diplomats, American academics, and journalists ridiculed him. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine called Bush's speech "simplistic." France's objections aside, the Iran of recent weeks is far from the democratizing country so many outsiders like