National Security and Foreign Affairs

It has finally happened.

A recent airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is believed to have caused more than 270 civilian deaths, a tragedy that provoked an international outpouring of grief and outrage.

But the uproar over the March 17 deaths in the Jadidah neighborhood of Mosul masks a grim reality: Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of other civilians have died in hundreds of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria during the war against Islamic State, and it appears likely that the vast majority of those deaths were never investigated by the U.S. military or its coalition partners.

On the way to this week's visit to Saudi Arabia, Secretary of Defense James Mattis was asked what the Trump administration would do to bolster its ally in the war in Yemen.

His answer was surprising.

Democrats are warning that President Donald Trump has a credibility problem as his administration grapples with the prospect of a new North Korean nuclear test.

They're pointing to the miscommunication over the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and accusing the Trump administration of lacking any strategy for responding to North Korea.

The White House needs to outline a clear strategy on Syria and North Korea, and obtain congressional approval if it wants to use military force, Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) told Pacific Council members during Spring Conference 2017.

Recently, several members and staffers on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia's role in the Presidential election, visited the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland. Inside the enormous black glass headquarters of America's largest spy agency, the congressmen and their aides were shown a binder of two to three dozen pages of highly classified intercepts, mostly transcripts of conversations between foreign government officials that took place during the Presidential transition.