JERUSALEM — The twin airstrikes in Damascus on Friday and Sunday attributed to Israel appear to be more about Jerusalem's broad, mostly covert battle with Iran and Hezbollah than about the bloody civil war raging in Syria.
In Pakistan, President Obama has retained the Bush administration's targeted drone missile attacks against suspected militants and may quietly be expanding the Central Intelligence Agency's covert battle against jihadis along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
A close reading of Julius Caesar, King Lear and Coriolanus, she declared, revealed the collective effort of a "little clique of disappointed and defeated politicians" fighting a desperate covert battle against the "despotism" of Elizabeth and James I. Delia Bacon was a formidable advocate for her namesake.
Yet for either President Obama or Mr. Romney, finding a satisfactory end to the war in Afghanistan and maintaining American influence in the continuing covert battle in Pakistan will be a far greater challenge than simply deciding whether to turn out the lights, or dim them, on the war effort after 2014.
While the Shin Bet will say nothing about how it conducts its covert battle against terror groups, published (and censored) testimony by ex-officials, along with Palestinian human rights reports, creates an outline of how the agency has recruited and run collaborators over the years.
Specifically, he disapproves of what he describes as the administration's efforts to "normalize and legitimize" targeted assassinations — drone-executed and otherwise — Special Operations raids and other covert military practices that blur the battle lines of the war on terrorism.
In a region where covert operations are common, secrecy prized, and battles seem to break out spontaneously, it feels bizarre for the world to be discussing out loud the ins-and-outs of military action.
The Fourth Estate needs to go back to work battling the undue secrecy and covert perception management which will ultimately be used against them all and the U.S. citizenry.
There is an overwhelming air of grief and anger as Buffy relates her people's almost hopeless battles with government-backed energy companies and their covert operations.
American military officers have disclosed a covert program in the 80's that provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence agencies knew the Iraqis would use chemical weapons.
