Michael Brill
Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University | Non-Resident Fellow at USAFA Institute for Future Conflict | Visiting Lecturer in Political Science at Westfield State University | Former Wilson Center Global Fellow
- Reposted by Michael Brill
[Not loaded yet] - "The deprivations & darkness of the dictatorship, which immiserates the Iraqi people even as it demands performative displays of happiness, lurk around every corner." @benkenigsberg.bsky.social for @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/m...
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- "Since ICE’s funding increase, the Senate has held just one public hearing on ICE, according to my own unpublished data. Although the House has held a few routine oversight hearings of DHS, none have focused on ICE..." @ccleavitt.bsky.social @theconversation.com theconversation.com/congress-has...
- Reposted by Michael BrillCongress increased ICE's funding from $8 billion in 2024 to $28 billion in 2025, making it the nation's most highly funded law enforcement agency. Yet the Senate has held just one public hearing on ICE since then. buff.ly/4tjognS
- "On Monday, the court rejected the family’s $22 million lawsuit accusing the French government of unjustly profiting from cheap deals with Iraqi officials who claimed control of the home under antisemitic laws." @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/w...
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- "Since no concerned party has denied the authenticity of these minutes, it is most likely that they are accurate. In doing so, Wahhab has commendably placed in readers’ hands one of the most important documents of the Lebanese War." syriacpress.com/blog/2026/02...
- Reposted by Michael BrillXi Jinping’s recent purges of senior PLA officers reveal a military stripped of independence, with obedience engineered by Leninist party structures. China’s century of purges | Clark Aoqi Wu engelsbergideas.com/essays/china...
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- "While Iraqis were dazzled by the luxuries of Western consumer goods, stories existed on the margins of tragedies, forced disappearances of political figures, imagined conspiracies forcefully snuffed out." www.annahar.com/news/details....
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- “The Bush administration definitely thought that the US itself, Iraq & the oil industry would see the economic benefits (from Iraqi oil) much more quickly than it was realized.” @mbazzi.bsky.social @cnn.com edition.cnn.com/2026/01/26/b...
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- Reposted by Michael BrillA new report from the OPCW IIT concludes Syrian forces, particularly Assad's Tiger Forces, were responsible for the October 2016 chlorine attack on Kafr Zita www.opcw.org/sites/defaul...
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- Working for Human Rights Watch in the 1990s, @joosthiltermann.bsky.social documented the Anfal campaigns based on captured Ba'th regime documents. His experiences & research undoubtedly informed his novel "The Resurrected," to be published April 14th. www.afsana-press.com/post/afsana-...
- Bizarre misreading of both Iraq & Venezuela. Then & now, the US does not have state oil companies. Along with the oil majors being wary of Iraq, the Bush administration promised to honor Chinese oil contracts for not overtly opposing the 2003 War. This was US policy. jstribune.com/profiting-fr...
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- Branch 300 appeared to have the purview of closely monitoring people entering and leaving Syria. They took a special interest in those who had multiple passports and had lived abroad. They also investigated in-depth those with ties to the regime's allies & enemies alike. snhr.org/blog/2026/01...
- "Under Spanish law, anyone found to have knowingly participated in money laundering can be prosecuted as a principal, an accomplice, an instigator, or a conspiracy, depending on the legal classification of the acts & facts." snhr.org/blog/2026/01...
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- "The image showed Trump seated across a table holding several red caps bearing one of his favorite slogans, 'America is back,' with a cup of soft drink in front of him, as well as an old Iraqi banknote." www.turkiyetoday.com/world/bankno...
- "The National Desert Storm Memorial Association’s Dedication Ceremony will be open to the public and the ceremony will be Saturday, October 24, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. EDT." www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2026/01/movi...
- "Third, did Hafez al-Assad & Jumblatt ask themselves, amid their mutual competition in Islamic sentiment, whether Muslims even recognized them as Muslims in the first place? The minutes do not suggest that the two prominent leaders paused at this intriguing point." syriacpress.com/blog/2026/01...
- "Regarding the first question, Kamal Jumblatt’s discourse in his last meeting with Assad suggests that he was, in fact, the original founder of what later became the ideology of 'resistance' in Lebanon..." syriacpress.com/blog/2026/01...
- “It conceded that US knowledge of the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme was based largely – perhaps 90% of it – on analysis of imprecise intelligence..." @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/world/2017/n...
- 2025 Arthur Ross Book Award Ceremony and Meeting: "The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq," by Steve Coll @cfr.org & @economist.com www.cfr.org/event/2025-a...
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- "All of these measures were too cautious,too late, and ultimately not credible enough to shift Putin’s calculus." -Alan He for the Institute for Future Conflict at the United States Air Force Academy ifc.usafa.edu/articles/ukr...
- "The Acting President of Venezuela... The conqueror of Osterlich... The future Emperor... of the World!" time.com/7345445/trum...
- "But even as we partner with Iraq, the AUMFs have remained on the books, allowing a president to justify military action in Iraq without coming to Congress to seek legal authorization." @kaine.senate.gov & Senator Todd Young (R-Indiana) readthereporter.com/formally-end...
- Reposted by Michael BrillHuge news: after many years, my bipartisan bill with Senator Todd Young to repeal the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force against Iraq was signed into law. This is a historic win for Americans and allows us to close the book on this forever war.
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- "The Dassault aircraft apparently impressed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose air force had been badly battered by the eight-year Iran-Iraq War & nearly demolished during the ensuing Gulf War." @petersuciu.bsky.social for The National Interest nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/fr...
- "It took until 2009, six years after the US invasion, for Iraq to provide security guarantees & attract investment from multinational oil companies that brought production levels back to those under Saddam’s rule." @mbazzi.bsky.social for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
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- "However, neither Iraq nor Panama offers a perfect match to the present situation. The use of history to shed light on current events can be dangerously misleading. The parallels are never exactly parallel." @joshschwartz.bsky.social & Paul Lendway www.post-gazette.com/opinion/insi...
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- "First, American presidents have recycled these kinds of arguments for going to war for as long as I’ve been alive – these are not particular to the conflict that began in 2003. A threat to Americans? Alleged terrorism? We’ve heard this before, many times." www.usnews.com/news/u-s-new...
- "Since last March, teams have visited 19 locations, four of which were previously declared. They also conducted interviews with former chemical weapons experts and collected six samples as well as over 6,000 documents." news.un.org/en/story/202...
- Oscar Wyatt would have loved this scheme. Meet Oil-for-Food Redux, where instead of Saddam exploiting the program to strengthen his regime, you can have both the Venezuelan and US governments as joint-drivers of corruption.
- "War games simulations run previously by Washington on what could happen following Mr. Maduro’s ouster indicate the chances for low-intensity civil conflict are substantial." -Chris Arsenault for @theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...
- "Drawing from previously secret Israeli documents, they can prove the central role played by the Israeli secret service (Mossad) in Ben Barka's assassination." @qantarade.bsky.social qantara.de/en/article/m...
- "Trump is already repeating the fundamental error that doomed the US effort to remake Iraq. Just like Bush, he has failed to grasp that removing a dictator is not enough to overcome the decades-long legacy of dictatorship." @ccaryl.bsky.social @foreignpolicy.com foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/06/t...
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- "That Kamal Jumblatt twice referred, in admiration, to the Biafra scenario is terrifying, especially since he also praised the 1860 massacres, saying people 'rested' afterward." -Hicham Bou Nassif syriacpress.com/blog/2026/01...
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- US oil companies were wary of entering Iraq even with 100,000+ US troops occupying the country, leaving China to line up major oil contracts in 2008. There is no H.R. McMaster left in the room to explain to Trump that the US doesn't have state oil companies. @wsj.com www.wsj.com/business/ene...
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- "The reported capture of Maduro evokes previous eras when other leaders, such as Panama’s former military leader Manuel Noriega and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, were seized by the US." @aljazeera.com www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/202...
- "As the Trump administration escalates its pressure campaign against Venezuela, it is becoming increasingly clear that the only lessons America absorbed from its catastrophic invasion of Iraq were the wrong ones." -Paulina Velasco @thehill.com thehill.com/opinion/inte...
- "Bashar al-Assad’s security agencies kept meticulous records of every Syrian they arrested, once-hidden ledgers that many hoped would offer clues to the fates of their missing loved ones after the government fell." @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/w...
- "The Times reviewed thousands of pages of internal Syrian documents, including memos marked 'Top Secret,' many of which we photographed inside Syria’s most notorious security branches after rebels toppled the Assad government last year." @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/w...
- "Tony Blair’s government discussed how to 'influence' John Howard when it came to committing Australian troops to Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime, newly released files in the UK show." @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
- "The record is clear. It is incorrect to claim that Kamal Jumblatt rejected Hafez al-Assad’s intervention in the Lebanese war. Initially, he supported it and benefited from it." syriacpress.com/blog/2025/12...
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- I am looking forward to assigning @samuelhelfont.bsky.social's "The Iraq Wars" from @academic.oup.com in a class on the subject during the spring semester. I used a couple "A Very Short Introduction" books this fall & they worked well & were well received by students. global.oup.com/academic/pro...
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- Great interview of @samuelhelfont.bsky.social about his new book "The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction" with @oxunipress.bsky.social on the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social. pocketcasts.com/podcast/new-...
- "Taken together, these cases illustrate not only the human costs of war, but the institutional difficulties Iraqi families faced when seeking recognition, accountability or redress." @aoav.bsky.social aoav.org.uk/2025/ghosts-...
- Reposted by Michael BrillOur warmest congratulations to former Cambridge Centre Mellon visiting student @robert-yee.bsky.social on the publication of "The City's Defense: The Bank of England & the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914-1939" by @universitypress.cambridge.org!!
- The 2025 Institute for Future Conflict Christmas Book List: ifc.usafa.edu/articles/202...
- "For two weeks, until Western reporters and television crews were allowed to return to Iraq, Mr. Arnett turned out one exclusive report after another. Besides interviewing Mr. Hussein, he documented the hardships of Iraqis under the bombing..." @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/w...
- "Beijing has done exceptionally well in exploiting these agreements with Baghdad, with some 34% of Iraq's proven reserves & two-thirds of current production now managed by Chinese companies." oilprice.com/Energy/Energ...
- "Outside, just a short drive away, stood the most public symbol of our family’s imprint on the city: the Freedom Monument. Its architectural base was designed by my great-uncle, Rifat Chadirji, & the monument itself was sculpted by Jawad Saleem." jummar.media/en/10769
- "Most of the credit for the documents’ existence must go to the al-Assad regime itself. It was a prolific documentarian of its own bad behaviour." @thewalrus.ca thewalrus.ca/syria-justice/
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- "[A]s of July 2021, there was no action that the United States or its allies could have taken that would have convinced Putin to call off the attack. All of Putin's incentive structures & past experience encouraged him to invade Ukraine." -Ryan McCauley ifc.usafa.edu/articles/tak...
