Saddam Hussein

On the 28th of July, 2002, Tony Blair sent a “Note on Iraq” to President George W. Bush. It began: “I will be with you, whatever.” And with those six words, the British Prime Minister sealed his fate, committed his country to a disastrous war, and ultimately wrote the phrase that will endure on his political headstone. On […]

Thirty-five years after Operation Opera – the Israeli air attack that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, retired IAF officers and Mossad agents revealed hitherto unknown details of the operation on Friday. In an expose aired on Channel 10, Col. (Ret.) Ze’ev Raz, who led the June 7, 1981 raid, said that Air Force […]

Muqtada al-Sadr was ignored while the U.S. was in Iraq, but he has proven that he cannot be ignored any longer.

On a dusty Baghdad avenue, less than a day before the Gulf War kicked off in 1990, hundreds of Iraqi soldiers marched in sync with Star Wars–themed music — a show of defiance against the American troops who would soon start bombing the country. The Iraqi soldiers passed under the city’s Victory Arch, a giant pair […]

Without a doubt we will see future deployments of dozens, if not hundreds, of special operations soldiers in Libya — likely in the next 18 months.

On permanent display in the Royal Armouries’ collection at Fort Nelson, Hampshire are two huge, steel pipes bolted together and projecting high into the air. They’re enormous, big enough for someone to crawl through. These giant cylinders are one of the few remaining pieces of a contender for one of the most audacious pieces of engineering ever […]

[Editor’s Note: I was a sophomore in High School when Operation Desert Storm kicked off. I remember keeping track of the massive coalition buildup during Desert Shield, knowing each type of aircraft, the weapons it would most likely employ, and under what conditions. Lieutenant General David “Zatar” Deptula was the U.S Air Force Weapons Officer […]

An exclusive interview with Sean Naylor, counterterrorism reporter for Foreign Policy and author of “Relentless Strike,” regarding JSOC’s capabilities.

Before GROM were formed, Polish forces had to work hard to win over their new NATO and the Western allies. New, because until then they had been the arch enemy on the other side of the iron curtain. Here’s how the story began. In July 1990, half of the Iraqi army was deployed to the southern part […]