News that the U.S. State Department issued a visa to Hani Nour Eldin, a member of Egypt’s Gama’a al-Islamiya or Islamic Group, has sparked a roaring controversy over the circumstances and appropriateness of the decision. On June 24, Representative Peter
Back in mid-February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that al-Qaeda had “infiltrated” the Syrian opposition. At roughly the same time, videos began emerging on the internet that clearly revealed just what an understatement–to put it mildly–Clapper’s observation represented.
The French Syria specialist Frédéric Pichon accuses the Western media of irresponsibility in its treatment of the Syria crisis: of being ignorant about the region and its history, neglecting to verify sources, blithely parroting activist talking points–in short, of “refusing to deal
Last month, to much fanfare, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Muammar al-Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, and Libyan military intelligence chief Abdullah Al-Senussi. ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had filed an application for the warrants in
In an article in Monday’s edition of the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera, correspondent Lorenzo Cremonesi reports from what he describes as the former cafeteria of the oil refinery in the Libyan coastal city of Brega: “former” because, according
In an interview with the French daily Libération, Amnesty International official Donatella Rovera has cast doubt on widely-publicized charges that Libyan government troops loyal to Muammar al-Gaddafi have engaged in mass rape or even used rape as a “weapon of
Yesterday, NATO aircraft pounded the Libyan capital Tripoli in what has been reported to have been the heaviest bombing of Tripoli since the initiation of western airstrikes in March. Reuters reported that the city was struck “several times an hour”
In an interview with Fox News yesterday, Senator James Inhofe spoke about pictures of a dead Osama Bin Laden that he viewed at CIA headquarters. While describing some of the photos as “gruesome,” Inhofe insisted that Bin Laden is recognizable
Over the weekend, the Department of Defense released soundless video clips of what appear to be previously unpublished “outtakes” from Osama Bin Laden video messages. The clips were reportedly discovered among materials seized at the compound in Abottabad, Pakistan, that
In justifying his refusal to release any photographic evidence of the killing of Osama Bin Laden by American forces, President Obama has said that “We don’t need to spike the football” and “We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.”
The video images show the charred remains of five bodies. A crowd has gathered around the grisly spectacle, and someone pulls away the top of a green body bag so that the camera can get a better view. The scene