The Lion's Den

By all accounts, the mullahs in Tehran are getting ever closer to the point where they at will can order nuclear bombs to be made and readied for use.

When will American politicians and military leaders eventually realize that training foreign soldiers does not allies make them?

If Hamas knows it cannot defeat the Israel Defense Forces and will get a bloody nose for its efforts, it obviously has motives other than victory in mind.

Western powers enjoy overwhelming battlefield superiority but face great difficulty when trying to shape other countries.

Obama got away with saying that he had characterized the attack on the Benghazi consulate as a terrorist incident because the moderator confirmed his point; in fact he misrepresented the facts when he said "The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that … this was an act of terror."

The AWACS Israel is selling to Turkey will potentially be used against Israel in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Egyptian publication Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that the U.S. government has supplied five containers carrying 140,000 teargas canisters to Egypt's Interior Ministry. It further reports that this shipment...

Now that Israelis humiliated themselves and Erdogan is rampaging ahead, some are awakening to the fact that this apology only made matters worse.

Surviving the strikes will permit Assad to boast that he defeated the United States.

What is it about Jewish organizations that they acclaim their opponents?

Even the modestly dressed and Islamist friendly Catherine Ashton did not escape being photoshopped.

Erdoğan can be seen as the anti-Atatürk, the leader who seeks to undo substantial parts of his predecessor's legacy, especially Atatürk's rejection of Shari'a, or Islamic law.

It happens every four years, as U.S. presidential elections roll around: I feel like a stranger. That's because news reports blare out what's not of interest: trivial statistics (171,000 jobs added in October; jobless rate up 0.1 percent to 7.9 percent), biographical irrelevancies (claims that Romney outsourced jobs to other countries when at Bain Capital), and forgettable gaffes (Obama saying that "Voting is the best revenge"). This limited discussion misses the main points.

Special Ops used to be about capturing or killing enemies; now it's about shaping public opinion.

Barack Obama has a weak record in the Middle East, but one would not learn this from the debate, where Mitt Romney praised Obama's achievements ("It's wonderful that Libya seems to be making some progress"), agreed with Obama more than he disagreed, and rarely pointed out his failings. Presumably, Romney took this mild approach to establish his likability, competence, and suitability to serve as commander-in-chief.

Other characteristically Muslim crimes taking place in Western countries include honor killings, female genital mutilation, and slave holding.

The military has grown so large because of preferential tax treatment, subsidized labor, an extra-legal status, and old-boy networks.

Publishing house Palgrave Macmillan apologized for appearing to endorse "the Palestinian struggle."

One must expect future non-suicide bombers to turn to niqabs or burqas, as many terrorists and criminals have repeatedly done.

History and human nature say yes.

If Assad is winning, Western governments should respond by helping the rebels to prevent Assad from crushing them.

Dallas was a bastion of right-wing kooks with a vast legacy -- now, watch how this bastion gets blamed for the communist Oswald...

Ahmed Shafiq, the former air force commander and former president Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, actually won the presidential race by a narrow margin.

Though my suggestion to now back Assad to prevent Jihadi takeover and allow both sides to fight themselves to exhaustion was rejected, it seems now the administration is taking note of my counsel.

Middle East expert Daniel Pipes advocates backing Assad in Syria to keep the civil war there going.

It will be a long, hard road to traverse, but there is no short cut and it can succeed.

Shimon Shiffer reports in Yedioth Ahronoth that in secret talks in 2010 via U.S. government mediator Frederic C. Hof, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed in principle to a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights to the June 4, 1967, lines in return for the "expectation" of Bashar al-Assad cutting ties with Iran, and that the nearly-completed negotiations ended because of the anti-Assad uprising that began in January 2011.

Should the crackdown succeed in isolating, weakening, and destroying the Islamists, then others will replicate it elsewhere.