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GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Thursday that the Middle East was more secure when key dictators were still in power, and said too many Democrats and Republicans have supported toppling Middle Eastern governments to the benefit of the United States' enemies."Was the world, in fact, in the Middle East, a more secure place when Saddam Hussein was in power, when Moammar Gadhafi was in power, and when [Bashar] Assad wasn't fighting for his life in Syria?" asked MSNBC's Joe Scarborough."Of course it was," Cruz answered. "That's not even a close call."Cruz said Gadhafi did bad things but had worked...

Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 6:47 a.m. ESTHillary Rebuked by Iraqi Leader New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has caused an international incident after she criticized Iraq's leading candidate to become prime minister as a result of last month's historic election, prompting a sharp rebuke. "Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American administration, and I don't know why she said this," Dr. Ibrahim Jafari, who is expected to become prime minister, told the Times of London on Thursday. "She knows nothing about the Iraqi situation," he added. During an interview last Sunday,...

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay. Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred...

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri again referenced the Benghazi, Libya, attack in an audio tape posted on jihadist websites last week, in remarks that, like all his statements, were immediately carefully scrutinized by counter-terrorism analysts searching for clues about the terrorist network’s operations. Al-Zawahiri had called for Americans to be targeted in Libya the day before the diplomatic mission was attacked, leading to speculation that al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan had some sort of role or influence in the attack.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has apologized for Iraq war "mistakes" and expressed regret about failing to properly plan after toppling the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, which is due to be aired Sunday. For the first time publicly, Blair has admitted to oversights in intelligence and planning of the war -- referring to the allegation that Saddam’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, a claim used by the U.S. and British governments to justify launching the invasion. "I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong. I also...

Speaking Tuesday night to Brett Baier, Donald Trump sounded more like Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee and Dennis Kucinich than like the Republican front-runner for president. Asked whether he stood behind his 2008 interview where he said it would have been a “wonderful thing” if Nancy Pelosi had attempted to impeach President George W. Bush, Trump said this: “I think he was a disaster and I think it was one of the worst decisions ever made. [He] has totally destabilized the Middle East. If you had Saddam Hussein, you wouldn’t have the problems you have right now.” I’m sorry, but...

Al-Qaeda's third-ranked leader and alleged mastermind of the Riyadh bombings has been seized in Iran, intelligence sources say. The United States has identified Saif al-Adel as the most senior al-Qaeda member linked to the attacks that killed 34 people, including one Australian, earlier this month. Intelligence sources said al-Adel, formerly Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguard, approved the bombing plans before his capture by Iranian security forces nine days before the attack. Iran is thought to want to handover al-Adel to Washington, in return for senior leaders in the anti-Iranian terrorist group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). He would probably be deported to...

A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told US interrogators the meeting never happened, according to US officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the US in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague in the Czech Republic, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. US officials caution that Ani may have been lying...

American intelligence analysts have been pressured into giving a more positive assessment of the progress of the war against ISIS, it has been reported, confirming what was obvious to everyone not subject to influence from the White House: the anti-ISIS campaign is failing. To devise an effective strategy involves understanding where ISIS came from, and that involves examining the Saddam Hussein regime. Saddam is commonly regarded as the quintessential secularist, and he was initially. But the Saddam regime Islamized over its last 15 years, effectively creating a religious movement under Saddam's leadership, giving additional space and power to the non-governmental...

Raising $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020 is challenging, but possible through mechanisms including carbon markets, domestic carbon taxes and a variety of international transportation taxes, a United Nations advisory group said in a report Friday. Earlier this year, the UN's Ban established the panel, which includes U.S. National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, billionaire financier George Soros and Deutsche Bank vice-chairman Caio Koch-Weser. The financing will be used to support mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries--in particular, for the poorest and most vulnerable communities.

Fadel Ahmad Abdullah al-Hiyali (a.k.a. Haji Mutazz or Abu Muslim al-Turkmani), the Islamic State’s (ISIS’s) commander in Iraq and overall deputy to the “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a drone strike in Mosul on August 18, according to a U.S. spokesman for the National Security Council yesterday. Al-Hiyali was reported to have been travelling in a car with a media operative named Abu Abdullah when he was killed. The first thing that this means is that the reports from the end of last year, based on statements from senior American officials, that al-Hiyali had been killed between Dec....

Once part of one of the most brutal dictator's army in the Middle East, over 100 former members of Saddam Hussein's military and intelligence officers are now part of ISIS. Now they make up the complex network of ISIS's leadership, helping to build the military strategies which have led the brutal jihadi group to their military gains in Syria and Iraq. The officers gave ISIS the organization and discipline it needed to weld together jihadi fighters drawn from across the globe, integrating terror tactics like suicide bombings with military operation

Twenty-five years have passed since Aug. 2, 1990, the day Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait. Saddam stunned the world. Oil prices skyrocketed, economies rich and poor reeled. The headlines and commentariat fret were fearful, the excuses tendered by Saddam's apologists intellectually boggling and morally bankrupt. Saddam expected U.S. and Saudi opposition, but suddenly he faced more opponents than he ever imagined. In the following weeks, President George H. W. Bush and his administration created a militarily effective and politically resilient coalition that would include 34 nations. Bush would later call it an "uncommon coalition" and regard its formation as a...

Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, on Saturday said that the Iraqi security forces captured a leading figure in Saddam Hussein’s Baath party in an operation based on intelligence reports. Al-Abadi said this in his address to a ceremony in Baghdad for the 146th anniversary of the Iraqi press. “The security forces managed to arrest the terrorist Abdul Karim al-Sadoun by the efforts of the Iraqi intelligence,” Abadi said. Abadi did not give further details about how or where the arrest took place, saying he preferred an official statement to declare the details later as interrogation was still underway. Al-Sadoun was...

The foreign policy position of several Republican candidates took a dramatic turn after Jeb Bush, by common perception, bungled a question on the Iraq War.  Knowing what he knows now (i.e., that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) would Governor Bush have launched an invasion in 2003?  Bush answered in the affirmative, thereafter discovering that he had misunderstood the question and needed to amend his response.  Immediately after, such other candidates as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz deemed it prudent to say no – knowing what they also know now, they would not have attacked Iraq...

SANLIURFA, Turkey — When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join the Islamic State, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe. Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis... All of the men, however, were former Iraqi officers who had served under Saddam Hussein... His account, and those of others who have lived with or fought against the Islamic State over the past two years, underscore the pervasive role played by members of...

INTELLIGENCE agents from Prague to Swansea are uncovering a trail of clues that point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions. Iraqi ministers have spent the week protesting Baghdad’s innocence to the United Nations, but will not say why some of its diplomats who met Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers, disappeared from their European posts after that date. Nor will Baghdad explain why Saddam’s agents were spotted at various times this year with Atta in Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. Many in the Pentagon are sure Saddam ...

<p>Probable Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush got himself into trouble by sort of, sort of not, answering the question whether he would have supported going into Iraq in 2003 — had he known then what we know now.</p> <p>Republican candidates vied in attacking Bush’s initial confusion about answering the question. Most reiterated that they most certainly would not have invaded Iraq, regardless of what they know now or thought they knew then. Politically, it appears to be wiser to damn the decision to invade Iraq and to forget the circumstances that prompted the war — and the later political environment that ended the American presence.</p>

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attempted to draw a bright line between himself and Jeb Bush on the Iraq War in a CNN interview on Tuesday, definitively stating that given the absence of weapons of mass destruction he wouldn't have authorized the war. "I think President [George W.] Bush made the best decision he could at the time, given that his intelligence community was telling him that there was (weapons of mass destruction) and that there were other threats right there in Iraq," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead." "But I don't think you can honestly say that...

Jeb Bush is taking extreme fire for answering, in response to a question that set the predicate of “knowing what he knows now,” that yes,he would still have gone into Iraq in 2003, as his brother did when president. (Now he says he did not hear the “knowing what I know now” part of the question.) Far be it from me to defend Governor Bush, of whom I have a not-very-high opinion that continues to sink, but on the merits, the case must still be made that the original eviction of Saddam was in many respects a good call. (Okay,...