The Obama administration’s initiative to set up a new Syrian opposition council, possibly to serve as an interim government following the fall of the Assad regime, appeared to have failed on Thursday before the convention in Qatar even began.
The United States and France are concerned that Islamists have taken over northern Mali, and the two countries are heavily leaning on Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of the neighboring regional power Algeria, to support an international invasion of Mali.
The Southeast Asian country of Laos in the late 1950s and early 60s was a complex and confusing patchwork of civil conflicts, changes of government and switching loyalties. The CIA and the State Department alone could take credit for engineering coups at least once in each of the years 1958, 1959 and 1960….