Epstein Secrets

, others unfurl militant, anti-Israel rhetoric to chanting supporters. Corruption and patronage Ideology aside, the Hamas that won control of this Mediterranean strip, isolated by an economic siege and hobbled by 30 percent unemployment, no longer looks the same to many Gazans. It secured once-lawless stree

ruption and their own dwindling perks. Only in Iraq, untouched by the Arab Spring, does the strongman of yesteryear in the person of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki seem to live on, though in a much more constrained form. So what are the consequences of an Arab world bereft of powerful authoritarians? Four sta

the peace on the Israeli=Syrian border. But the Syrians had also stoked tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli frontier and had given Ir=n access to the Mediterranean, so perilously close to Israel. It was the b=tter part of wisdom to steer clear of Syria's fire.=/p> But alleged Israeli airstrikes <http://www.was

l against an Alawite minority, has been a boon t= the Sunnis of Iraq. The Sunnis have bottomless grievances against the gov=rnment of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. To them, Maliki, who spent a qua=ter-century exiled in Syria and Iran, is an agent of the Iranian theocracy. So even though the regime in S=ria di

tate of Iraq and al Sham—isn't a threat only to Iraq and S=ria. It seeks to impose its vision of a single radical Islamist state stre=ching from the Mediterranean coast of Syria through modern Iraq, the region of the Islamic Caliphates established in t=e seventh and eighth centuries. The threat of Sunni=extre

http://topics.wsj.com/person/O/Obama/4328> administration. The U.S. is weighing more direct military assis=ance to the government of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, the White House said Thursday, and officials hinted that =id might include airstrikes on militants who have edged to within a half-h=ur's drive of