Epstein Secrets

"The CIA is laughing at you guys," he told the assembled human rights lawyers. "You're worried about international law, and the CIA is laughing." A White House official I spoke with is even more dismissive. "If Anwar al-Awlaki is your poster boy for why we shouldn't do drone strikes," the official tells me

unities in the cities. Between 1943 and 1957, Alawite migration tripled the population of Hama, and between 1957 and 1979 it quadrupled the size of Latakia. Many Alawites also joined the military. Since Ottoman times, Sunni Arabs had largely spurned army careers, but Alawites welcomed the opportunity

s, and yet has remarkably culminated in the re- legitimization of the person responsible for it, Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian civil war— particularly the White House's inept and improvisational response to it—has accidentally transformed Putin into a major power- broker for the post-Arab Spring Middle East. (This i

recent meeting with Putin over the Iran negotiations in Geneva), nor has the Israeli Air Force's destruction of newly arrived Yakhont missiles in Latakia several months ago jeopardized Israeli-Russian relations. Another incentive for Israel to court the Kremlin is that it clearly admires Russia's app

uch an anchor in the Arab world as Egypt. The decision to give up on the admittedly difficult negotiations with the Iraqis was clearly motivated by White House's desire to run on "ending" the war in Iraq. This was as unnecessary as it was unwise. The decision to allow deep cuts in defense spending -- rather

n my eyes, worth all the palaces in this world." He had pined to leave that poverty; he had come down from his mountain village to the port town of Latakia, on the Mediterranean, to get a secondary-school education; he had made it to the military academy, and the uniform had given him all that was now

ws on the carnage in Syria through effective policies, the killing and the arrests there will continue, with the U.S. bearing partial responsibility. The White House's uncertainty can be measured in human lives. The Syrian protesters are right in not pursuing their salvation in Washington, let alone Brussels, Paris,

ly occasions on which large numbers of people are permitted to assemble-have spread from Deraa to at least a dozen other cities including Baniyas and Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, as well as to the northern city of Homs and some suburbs of Damascus. * With the Alawi-dominated regime under threat, the