So I've written before about the startling number of mishaps that might have led to a nuclear war and a bomb that nearly detonated over North Carolina in the 1960's. Here are even more tales of just how close we've come over the years to catastrophic nuclear accidents, including the case of a repairman who dropped a socket from his wrench, which ( Read more... )

Iran's newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani, has launched an all-out diplomatic charm offensive lately, even reportedly saying that the Holocaust was "reprehensible". That's a far cry from the former president who was a nut who sponsored international conferences of Holocaust denials ( Read more... )

I think it's well past time that we got rid of these damn things. And if a nuclear bomb falling into a field where three of its four safety mechanisms then failed isn't enough to convince someone of that, maybe the 1995 incident where a Norweigan rocket studying the Northern Lights nearly caused Russia to launch its nuclear arsenal will do the ( Read more... )

CNN is reporting that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the Syrian Al Qaeda chapter rebels for the past two weeks now. I wonder if we'll be sending American "advisors" next.

Haven't we seen this movie before? Right down to Secretary Kissinger/President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize?

Today comes news of a possible diplomatic breakthrough in Syria, as the Russians have made a proposal to have Syria's chemical weapons placed under international control. Let's hope this proposal works out so that a military strike can be averted. However, I find it irritating that it is only now, after numerous officials have been beating the ( Read more... )

No matter who the president is, the first casualty of war is truth and in any mad dash to military confrontation, there is the inevitability that there are things the public is not being told. Syria seems to be no exception. From leaked diplomatic correspondence obtained by The Christian Science Monitor, we now learn that Iran has repeatedly ( Read more... )

I've been critical of any proposed intervention in Syria because it seems like another quagmire in the making. A large proportion of the American people are against such action and UN officials have warned that military action would be illegal without some sort of Security Council consent. Russia and China have objected to military action in the ( Read more... )

Does anyone remember all the stories that circulated in the fall and winter of 1990-91 in the run-up to the first Gulf War about how Iraqi soldiers were throwing babies out of incubators in occupied Kuwait? You know, the stories that, as it turned out, were completely made up?

Or do you remember when Colin Powell went before the United Nations ( Read more... )

Let me make sure I have this straight. Over ninety thousand people have died so far in two years of the civil war in Syria. That didn't particularly matter and certain didn't warrant US involvement. And yet, 100-150 people dying of chemical weapons burns is a red line that forces the US to get itself involved in an Islamic sectarian war? I'm ( Read more... )

When you propose sending weapons and supplies to a group of people or spending precious blood and treasure getting in the middle of a war that's far too complex for outsiders to truly understand, it's important to know something about the character of the people you're proposing to help.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Members of an al Qaeda-linked Islamist ( Read more... )