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Category: Politics

The disarming of Iraq: What went wrong and what went right

The disarming of Iraq: What went wrong and what went right

Henrietta Wilson writes: On the night of Sept. 25, 1991, Chief Inspector David Kay and his deputy, Robert Galluci, had a strange request for a group of Iraqis who were stopping them from leaving a carpark. If you’re going to beat anyone up, they asked, will you make sure it’s us? It was three days into a week-long standoff involving a team of unarmed inspectors mandated by the U.N. Security Council and their armed Iraqi inspection hosts. The issue at…

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Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate

Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate

The Associated Press reports: Soon after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in Ohio last month, anonymous pro-Russian accounts started spreading misleading claims and anti-American propaganda about it on Twitter, using Elon Musk’s new verification system to expand their reach while creating the illusion of credibility. The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill. The accounts spread fearmongering posts that…

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A four-decade secret: One man’s story of sabotaging Jimmy Carter’s re-election

A four-decade secret: One man’s story of sabotaging Jimmy Carter’s re-election

The New York Times reports: It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran…

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Averting crisis, Europe learns to live without Russian energy

Averting crisis, Europe learns to live without Russian energy

Paul Hockenos writes: When a cold snap hit northern Europe last November, ordinary citizens and industry leaders alike feared the onset of an agonizing winter of deprivation, spiraling energy prices, unheated buildings, and work stoppages. After all, embargoes in place as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had severely curtailed oil and gas deliveries to many countries and upended supply chains that much of Europe had come to rely on. Germany — whose industrial economy depended heavily on Russian…

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The International Criminal Court issues war crimes arrest warrant for Putin

The International Criminal Court issues war crimes arrest warrant for Putin

The Associated Press reports: The International Criminal Court said Friday it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Although world leaders have been indicted before, it was the first time the ICC has issued a warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible…

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Turkey’s president says he will back Finland’s NATO bid

Turkey’s president says he will back Finland’s NATO bid

The Associated Press reports: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that his government would move forward with ratifying Finland’s NATO application, paving the way for the country to join the military bloc ahead of Sweden. The breakthrough came as Finnish President Sauli Niinisto was in Ankara to meet with Erdogan. Both Finland and Sweden applied to become NATO members 10 months ago in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abandoning decades of nonalignment. NATO requires the unanimous approval…

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Xi, cast as peacemaker, wades into Russia’s war in Ukraine

Xi, cast as peacemaker, wades into Russia’s war in Ukraine

The New York Times reports: China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has cast himself as a global statesman, helping Saudi Arabia and Iran broker a deal to restore diplomatic ties while extolling the virtues of “Chinese solutions and wisdom” in solving the world’s biggest security challenges. Now, Mr. Xi is putting himself at the center of Russia’s war with Ukraine, working to portray himself as a mediator who could cool down the protracted fight. The Chinese leader is expected to meet…

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Could the GOP divide over Ukraine become a lasting split?

Could the GOP divide over Ukraine become a lasting split?

Amanda Carpenter writes: The great hope among many Republicans is that Ron DeSantis will run for president in 2024 as a smarter version of former President Donald Trump. But DeSantis’s stance on the U.S. interest in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is proving unfortunate for anyone harboring that hope. In the past, the Florida governor’s backers may have been able to explain away his more controversial decisions—to align himself with election deniers, say, or use false pretenses to send migrants to…

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Chinese companies are shipping rifles, body armor to Russia

Chinese companies are shipping rifles, body armor to Russia

Politico reports: Chinese companies, including one connected to the government in Beijing, have sent Russian entities 1,000 assault rifles and other equipment that could be used for military purposes, including drone parts and body armor, according to trade and customs data obtained by POLITICO. The shipments took place between June and December 2022, according to the data provided by ImportGenius, a customs data aggregator. China North Industries Group Corporation Limited, one of the country’s largest state-owned defense contractors, sent the…

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Fighter jets coming ASAP, Poland tells Ukraine

Fighter jets coming ASAP, Poland tells Ukraine

Politico reports: Poland will deliver four Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine “in the next few days,” President Andrzej Duda said Thursday. Poland is the first country to formally commit to sending combat planes to Ukraine, which Kyiv says it urgently needs to repel the Russian invasion, which has become a brutal war of attrition in the eastern Donbas region. “We will be handing over four fully operational planes,” Duda said at a joint press conference with Czech President Petr…

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Pentagon analyst kept intel job after joining January 6 mob, planned to kidnap Jewish leaders

Pentagon analyst kept intel job after joining January 6 mob, planned to kidnap Jewish leaders

James Risen reports: In 2018, a newly hired software engineer at a defense and intelligence contractor in the Washington, D.C., suburbs was assigned to a team led by a senior developer named Hatchet Speed. At first, the new engineer, Richard Ngo, got along well with Speed. They sometimes went out to lunch together and socialized away from the office. “Speed was my mentor at Novetta as the software lead,” Ngo later said in court testimony. “We worked together every day.”…

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More than a quarter of Republicans approve of Capitol attack, poll shows

More than a quarter of Republicans approve of Capitol attack, poll shows

The Guardian reports: More than a quarter of Republicans approve of the January 6 Capitol attack, according to a new poll. More than half think the deadly riot was a form of legitimate political discourse. The Economist and YouGov survey said 27% of Republicans either strongly or somewhat approved of the riot on 6 January 2021, which Donald Trump incited in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden. Nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, have been linked…

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The Ukraine untruths of disingenuous DeSantis

The Ukraine untruths of disingenuous DeSantis

William Saletan writes: Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, bills himself as an enforcer. Speaking in Iowa last Friday as he prepared to run for president, DeSantis bragged about capturing Haitian migrants and sending the National Guard to control “BLM riots.” “There’s a new sheriff in town,” he told an audience in Des Moines. He boasted that Sheriff DeSantis was finally taking on one of America’s worst villains: the Walt Disney Company. He proudly informed the crowd that he was…

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Trump’s nomination would blow up Republican support for Ukraine, says former NATO chief

Trump’s nomination would blow up Republican support for Ukraine, says former NATO chief

Politico reports: Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former secretary-general of NATO, packs his prognosis for Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign into one loaded word. “I think President Trump will be a loser,” he tells me. It is a notoriously triggering term for the former president, evoking deep humiliation. Rasmussen uses it casually. “His baggage is too heavy, too controversial,” says Rasmussen, 70, who was Denmark’s prime minister for most of this century’s first decade. Yet Rasmussen, a right-of-center politician who is now…

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Tucker Carlson parroting Vladimir Putin

Tucker Carlson parroting Vladimir Putin

HuffPost reports: A conservative group has highlighted Tucker Carlson’s affinity for spreading Russian propaganda in a new video. The Fox News host has made a habit of leaning into Kremlin talking points and conspiracy theories since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Days before the war began, Carlson infamously defended Putin and said that Ukraine was “not a democracy.” Carlson’s mimicry has been so on point that on multiple occasions excerpts from his broadcasts have ended up on Russian state-sponsored TV. The Republican Accountability Project put Carlson on blast…

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The Republican ‘civil war’ on foreign policy

The Republican ‘civil war’ on foreign policy

The Washington Post reports: When Ronald Reagan addressed a brand new organization of upstart conservatives nearly five decades ago, he cast U.S. entanglements abroad as part of the nation’s destiny to take on “leadership of the free world” and to serve as a shining “city on the hill” that inspired other countries, sparking thunderous applause. At a dinner named after the former president at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering earlier this month, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari…

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