Syria

The magazine Foreign Policy (FP) is reporting the United Kingdom, France and some Baltic and Balkan states have agreed to increase special forces elements in Syria. It comes as a major victory for the Trump administration after it decided to pull troops out of Syria. Officially, the U.K. and France do not acknowledge having any […]

One of the earliest markers to define the civil war in Syria and signify its intensity was the closure of foreign embassies in Damascus. Not only did the closures—along with Syria’s suspension from the Arab League—suggest that the seat of government itself was threatened, they also indicated more clearly which countries supported the Syrian state […]

Troops from the Royal Marines 42 Commando unit boarded the Iranian tanker Grace 1 using light speedboats today. The Royal Marines rappelled from a helicopter onto the deck while approximately 16 police officers from Gibraltar were also involved in the operation. Luckily no shots were fired and the ship is secure at the moment. Gibraltarian […]

In recent years, we’ve witnessed the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and an annexation of Crimea. Television news channels are nearly hysterical reporting about covert Russian influence campaigns in the United States. Think tanks and policy councils weigh in on these events and delivered a series of terms like […]

I always balk at when someone I know writes something and I’m asked to give an opinion on it. As my circle of friends has grown smaller, I have erred on the side of caution, not wanting to hurt any of my friends’ feelings. Jack Murphy has never had that problem. Jack has been on […]

The following is an excerpt from the new book, “Murphy’s Law: My Journey from Ranger and Green Beret to Investigative Journalist.” That night we were driven out to the border crossing. On the side of the road, we picked up a Canadian named Peter Douglass, which had been prearranged with the driver. He was a […]

What a crazy week it as been with the book release!  Yesterday I did a interview with CBS, then was on the Brain Kilmeade show, then did my regular podcast with Ian Scotto interviewing former CIA case officer Bob Baer, met with my agent, and then drove over to Northvale, New Jersey for a book […]

I’m very excited to be able to share my memoir with readers today and it has already been interesting to see how the book is connecting with different people in different ways.  Some readers like to read about the combat missions, some are more interested to read about getting smuggled across international borders as a […]

Opinion: The US-led coalition which supported the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) have routed the Islamic State’s (ISIS) fighters out of Baghouz which was the last bastion of their self-proclaimed “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq. And while the SDF, supported by U.S. airstrikes continues to pound the remnants of the ISIS fighters in the tunnels and […]

Since the Vietnam War, the United States government has experimented with embedding development workers within military and intelligence teams to advance its work in counterinsurgency (COIN) missions with programs such as Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) and Phoenix. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has always led the charge in providing […]

In yet another show of force and commitment to the Middle East, more than 200 U.S. commandos participated in the annual Special Operations Forces (SOF) exercise Invincible Sentry 2019 in Qatar. The American special operators were joined by more than 400 Qatari commandos from the Joint Special Forces, the premier Qatari SOF unit, and Internal […]

According to Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a number of jihadis involved in the killing of four Americans in Syria in January have been captured. On January 16, a suicide bomber detonated in an urban restaurant in the Syrian city of Manbij, where the Americans were attending a meeting with local dignitaries. The blast killed Chief […]