Latest update from the BBC: The BBC reports that Iranian TV has shown the first video footage of the US drone that Tehran says it downed near the Afghan border. Images show Iranian military officials inspecting the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft which appears to be undamaged. Iranian officials say its forces electronically hijacked the drone and steered it to the ground. [:] BBC security correspondent Frank...

We lived in a different America then. News of the Japanese attack came from bulletins that broke into radio programs and was spread by word of mouth over the phone, on streets of cities and house to house in small towns. That Sunday, I was a 17-year-old college student with a part-time job in a New York hospital, standing next to a young man with a dazed grin, staring through a picture window at a nurse in a...

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and US entry into the Second World War. Sadly we are quickly approaching the time where we no longer have living survivors and Pearl Harbor may gradually become an abstract historical event rather than a true harsh experience. Whenever I think of the attack I am reminded of one of the more impressive stories of the day. At the time the attack began...

Parker, Florida Today This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Shortly after dawn 70 years ago today, Japanese warplanes launched an attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the largest U.S. military base in the Pacific. Within two hours, they had destroyed or damaged 18 warships and more than 200 aircraft, and killed 2,403 soldiers, sailors and Marines. While contemporary accounts and historians called the attack a total surprise, questions that have never been completely answered...

In “The Iraqi Phoenix Rises Again,” I described how the once proud and powerful Iraqi Air Force(IqAF) — at one time the sixth largest air force in the world — was decimated as a result of both the 1991 “Persian Gulf War” (Operation Desert Storm) and Saddam Hussein’s desperate concealing, disassembling and “stashing abroad” of its remaining aircraft before the 2003 U.S. invasion of...

Not since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War has the Middle East experienced such radical change. Dictators have fallen in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen; Syria is suffering civil war; and rebellion is cooking in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait. But with several revolutions behind us, the question remains of whether the revolutions will result in democracy or radical Islamic...

Calls for the legalization of drugs are coming from the strangest places these days – like from the president of the world’s leading cocaine exporter. Columnist Antonio Caballero of Colombia’s Semana writes that while he may be ‘the most submissive servant of the United States among world leaders,’ Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has done something not even Washington’s...

American citizens are celebrating in the streets as their government snatched final victory in the War on Terror on 1 Dec. 2011 — through a maneuver that used legislative brilliance rather than bullets. The moment of victory came when 61 senators passed a version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal year 2012 that allows the indefinite military detention on American soil of American citizens...

Is Iraq in for a re-eruption of the kind of ethnic and religious strife it experienced during the height of the U.S. occupation? For Iraq’s Al Iraq News, Dr. Fadhil Al Badrani warns his countrymen that unless Iraqi leaders ‘review their political inclinations and renounce their differences,’ those fearing a U.S. pullout – and those celebrating it – will end up as ‘wood’...

Africa has become a focal point in the war against terror. Away from the West and the battle fields of Iraq and Afganistahan Africa’s vast open and wild territory has become a playing ground for various terror groups over the last few years. The LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), and Al Shabaab, two of the major terror groups operating in Africa, are now commonly known names in western press. While terror...

A little over two weeks ago, we reported on a massive explosion inside an Iranian military base near the capital, Tehran. At the time, the semi-official Fars news agency issued a statement by the Revolutionary Guards which said the blast happened in an arsenal at a base in Bidganeh, inside a Revolutionary Guards weapons depot near the city of Karaj when weapons were being moved. Apparently, a large part of...

Things are moving quite rapidly and in the wrong direction in Pakistan after a NATO strike hit Pakistani army checkpoints near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and allegedly killed at least 24 soldiers. Pakistan had already ordered Pakistan’s border crossings into Afghanistan closed, interrupting NATO logistics efforts and ordered a review of all cooperation with the US and NATO. Now, according to Fox News,...

It’s clear that whoever is President will have a major issue on his or her hands as the United States moves into the 20th century, the ongoing problem with Pakistan. And this weekend relations have gotten worse and it could impact the war in Afghanistan: NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging U.S.-Pakistan...

During World War II, between 1942 and 1945, or approximately 70 years ago, brave Allied aviators flew numerous transport missions over and across the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains — they called it the “Hump” — to resupply units of the U.S. Army Air Forces based in China. These pilots had to wind their way between, around and sometimes over mountains as high as 15,000 feet in two- and...

Today President Obama signed a bill giving tax credits to employers hiring veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.  A worthy cause and similar to efforts that I was part of during the Vietnam war.  Even those soldiers who are not physically injured are mentally injured and employers know this.  Vietnam was bad, Iraq was worse.  I was a member of the military during the Vietnam war and although I...

British and German heads of state met this week to bridge the gap between them and “tried to paper over divergent views on European policy that have sparked a war of words between politicians and media in both countries.” For someone who lived through World War II, the picture of David Cameron entreating Angela Merkel conjures up Neville Chamberlain trying to appease Hitler—-and failing to stop the slaughter...

Some of us who were drawn and captivated by Obama’s soaring rhetoric and by his “incandescent” charisma during the 2008 presidential elections may feel somewhat disappointed by what we have seen in the past three years. The gentleman in this 6-minute video, Jake Lamar, tells us quietly, plainly and succinctly why he is not disappointed in President Obama and why he believes that Obama will be more like...

In the past week President Obama has taken several opportunities to stand up to the Chinese and reassert American dominance. This BBC article describes the past weeks events in three Acts. In Act One the US moved swiftly to advance the Transpacific Partnership, which would create a free trade area among major countries in the Pacific Rim, but for now would exclude China. While China was told the door was...

Is NATO pondering an Arab-backed, Libya-like invasion of Syria? Are Israel and the West planning to strike Iran’s nuclear program? Columnist Mohamed Kawash of Jordan’s Al-Arab Al-Yawm writes that the Arab street has a sinking feeling that history is about to repeat itself. For Jordan’s Al-Arab Al-Yawm, Mohamed Kawash writes in part: How similar today is to yesterday. History is repeating itself....

Iran today successfully stared down a new move by the US, France, Britain and Germany to push it to the wall despite a strongly worded United Nations watchdog agency report that it might still be trying to build nuclear weapons. Few qualified observers doubt that Iran is covertly conducting a nuclear weapons program and controversy continues over whether it is a year or a decade away from success. But Teheran...

The Arab league today gave a three-day extension to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to stop killing his own people or face expulsion from it, despite being a founding member. This is big. The Arab League, notorious in the Arab world for decades of mealy-mouthed equivocation, is suddenly roaring led by Qatar, a sliver of gas-rich sand with less than 300,000 citizens. Syria, where civilization is traced back to 10,000...

Has Washington intentionally set things up so that Iraq will have no choice but to allow U.S. forces to remain in the country past 2011? According to Sotal Iraq columnist Qasim Al-Kafaji, the U.S. has no intention of pulling out, which explains its 16,000 ‘diplomats’ at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and its failure to fully prepare Iraqis to take contol of their own territory. For Sotal Iraq/aka...

When the Tea Party was at its heyday during the 2010 elections, when the Palins and the Bachmanns ruled the day, we were treated to some soaring oratory by real, “take-our-country-back” Americans: You know, those real Americans, real patriots, real believers who belong to the party of core values, of family values — the good party, the party of God. Feeling quite dejected, feeling like a...

It’s February 2013. It’s 3 A.M. The phone rings in the President’s bedroom — it has an urgent ring. Finally the President picks up the phone. The voice of his National Security Advisor, John Bolton: “Mr. President, we have a serious situation developing in Asia.” The President: “Asia? Which Asia? Can’t you be more specific than that …” Bolton: “In China, Mr. President.” The...