by WALTER BRASCH We know the names of every one of the 4,479 Americans who were killed and the 32,200 who were wounded, both civilian and military, between March 20, 2003 and Oct. 21, 2011, the day President Barack Obama, fulfilling a campaign promise, declared the last American soldier would leave Iraq before the end of the year. We know Second Lieutenant Therrel Shane Childers was the first American soldier...

Barack Obama has answered a question David Petraeus posed eight years ago. A division commander as the Iraq invasion began in 2003, the General was troubled about what a young Illinois legislator would call a dumb war, asking “Tell me how this ends.” Over 4400 American lives and more than a trillion dollars later, President Obama has replied to Petraeus by withdrawing all troops from Iraq by year’s end. In...

Tunisians going to the polls in the first post Arab Spring elections by Roni Drukan Tunisia is where the Arab Spring revolt began. It is also the first country to go through elections post its Arab Spring revolution. And who is about to win a land slide victory in this election? The Islamist party of course. Tunisians will vote Sunday for a constituent assembly that will set the course for a new government...

Naomi Wolf, Occupy Wall Street and Oppression by Mark Nuckols While visiting Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, I open the Yahoo webpage and read the headline news that Naomi Wolf has been arrested by New York City police for defending the rights of anti-Wall street protesters. I can easily imagine Wolf frantically trying to bait the cops into arresting her so that she can get her name back in the news and pose as...

In three short years, President Obama has been able to do what President Bush could not do in eight: Destroy the leadership of Al Qaeda, get the last U.S. troops out of Iraq, and assist in toppling two Middle Eastern dictators. Were it not for the albatross of Afghanistan bequeathed by his predecessor, Obama would pretty much have a clean sweep. So how did he do it? It has taken a combination of: * Consensus...

A little more than a year ago, I wrote an article about a subject that I found fascinating: “The World War II Navajo Code Talkers.” It started with a reference to the great, 2002 movie “Windtalkers,” about the use of Native Americans, such as the Navajos, during World War II in the Pacific Theater by the U.S. intelligence services to transmit secret messages using “codes” built around their...

Peter Broelman, Australia This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

News from Libya provokes reactions as weird as the man himself: “CBS: Qaddafi. ABC: Gadhafi. NBC: Khaddafy,” tweets a White House correspondent. A satellite radio reporter adds: “Gadhafi is dead–someone reach into his wallet and look at his driver’s license so we finally know how to spell his last name!” Along with death jokes, a tyrant’s last minutes are on prime-time in a cellphone...

Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons Moammar Gadhafi Is Not Being Buried At Sea News Item: Mary Hockaday: The challenges of reporting Gaddafi’s death

As I was getting ready to brag about our President’s national security and foreign policy accomplishments in the wake of Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi’s ouster and death, USA TODAY beat me to it. So let me take the easy way out and just summarize what they have to say today about how “Obama builds on national security record.” The article starts with what President Obama said in December 2009, when he...

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France. He is a frequent contributor to TMV and The Reaction. Qaddafi’s death well and truly spells the end of another Arab dictatorship. Three out of the four out-and-out Arab dictatorships in North Africa have fallen in the last year. Now is a good time to take a step back to examine what this all means...

After eight and a half deeply tragic years highlighted by the deaths of nearly 4,800 U.S. and coalition forces, at least 100,000 Iraqis and millions of people displaced, the Iraq war finally is over. President Obama, on a military and foreign policy roll, announced yesterday a complete drawn-down of U.S. troops at year’s end after he failed to reach agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki...

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration has decided to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of the year after failing to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government. The agreement would have left several thousand troops there for special operations and training. President Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spoke Friday morning to cement that agreement in a scheduled...

Romney’s rhetoric is more informed than Michele Bachmann’s, less nutty than Ron Paul’s, and less self-admiring than Newt Gingrich’s, but his line on Obama’s record on national security and foreign policy is a sham. Obama is responsible for an aggressive assault on Al Qaeda, including the killing of bin Laden, in Pakistan, and of Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen. Beginning with his 2009 speech in Cairo, the...

A Yemeni boy watches the funeral of people killed this week in protests Observations in the wake of the death of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi: * The victory of middle-class professionals, rag-tag militias and tribal forces over a well-equipped, well-trained military in a relatively brief civil war is enormous. * Given the many conflicting stories, a full accounting of the circumstances surrounding the despot’s...

If this announcement is to be believed, Spain has now made a shift nearly as important as the end of the Spanish civil war, the death of dictator Francisco Franco, the approval of Spain’s first post-war democratic constitution and the first democratic election in post-Civil War Spain: the Basque separatist ETA has announced that this time it’s for real: it’s is deep-sixing its use of violence...

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Part of the U.S. military strategy during the Vietnam War was to remove the heavy foliage that provided cover for the enemy through the use of herbicides. “Agent Orange” is the name given to a blend of herbicides the U.S. military sprayed from 1962 to 1971 in Vietnam to remove such foliage. The name “Agent Orange” comes from the orange identifying stripe used on the 55-gallon drums in which...

MailOnline is a British website (for the Daily Mail) that really has the profuse use of photos and videos down to an art. THIS POST on the final moments alive of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi really is a classic — but not for the squeamish. It’s almost a class case of someone how behaved like he was in the gutter returning to the gutter, a dictator who seemed so brave when he ordered...

Gadhafi’s Death and The Word on the Street by Jack Lundee With the news reports flooding in this morning about the capture and death of Moammar Gadhafi, the violent dictator of Libya, much of Libya is in a state of euphoria; honking horns & celebratory gunshots are ringing out as Libya citizens celebrate what should be a great turning point in the country’s government. It has officially been confirmed...

Tom Janssen, The Netherlands This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

And so 247 days after troops loyal to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi opened fire on peaceful pro-democracy protesters, the favor has been returned. The world’s longest ruling despot is dead. The circumstances of Qaddafi’s death after he apparently was found in a tunnel in his hometown of Surt remain unclear. Initial reports said he had been shot in both legs and was being taken to a hospital for treatment,...

As reported here at TMV and several other sources, including the BBC, commanders for Libya’s transitional authorities say they have captured a wounded Col Qaddafi after claiming control of Sirte, Qaddafi’s birthplace. If true, this would come exactly two months after Libyan rebels captured the Libyan capital and overran Qaddafi’s fortified compound in Tripoli. In a post reporting on the Libyan rebels...

UPDATED: Reuters now reports that a captured, wounded Moammar Gadhafi has died of wounds that occurred when he was captured. This is on top of the Reuters website: “Breaking News: Libya’s Gaddafi dies of wounds suffered in capture near Sirte: NTC official” Reuters Tweet: FLASH: NTC official says head of Gaddafi’s armed forces Abu Bakr Younus Jabr killed during capture of Libyan ex-leader AFP...

Tom Janssen, The Netherlands The political and financial turmoil continues in Greece. Bigtime. The context: yet another vote on a tough austerity plan. The political setting: the “mother of all strikes” before the vote. The Christian Science Monitor reports: Greece is today racked with protest and violent episodes in what is being called the “mother of all strikes,” ahead of another vote...