Denis C. Theriault

Iraq’s would-be conquerors—the Sunni-led, Al-Qaida-rejected Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS!)—have now been parked a couple of hours’ drive from Baghdad for two days, notably slowing their roll after a too-easy jaunt through the country’s north. The Iraqi capital sits at the doorway to the country’s Shiite-dominated south, where hundreds of men have been […]

Iraq is falling apart. “Al-Qaida-inspired” insurgents calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are conquering city after city in the country’s relatively sympathetic Sunni north, rolling with stunning speed toward a clash in Shiite-dominated Baghdad. Iraq’s splintering along sectarian and ethnic lines took another turn this morning after Kurdish fighters seized an oil-producing […]

Pepper-spray, not another gun, was sufficiently mighty to stop America’s most recent mass shooting by a stalking gunman. But beyond that, so much looked familiar: A young white man with a gun and a knife, an educational institution for a setting (Seattle Pacific University, in this case), the swift implementation of well-orchestrated disaster plans, devastated […]

“With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice for you, Bashar!” Syria’s civil war is over—or at least it should be!—after a resounding electoral victory by the country’s no-longer-embattled president. Bashar al-Assad won a walloping 90 percent of the vote, easily securing another seven-year term. It was so easy, in fact, they didn’t even bother […]