She wondered who could have helped Rafsanjani with his gold from Ceausescu’s corrupt deals and terrorist partnerships with Gaddafi, Arafat, Ali Bhutto, and North Korea’s Kim Jung Il. A billion dollars of gold from Romania, such a poor country, while the people lived for twenty-four years under a ruthless dictatorship with little food, little heat, little light, no rights, no freedom, no life. Marina wished she knew what had happened to that gold, deposited in Tehran.

Two-and-a-half years after the U.S. pulled out of Iraq the country has crumbled into a bona-fide failed state, with Baghdad under siege by ISIS (jihadist militants from the Islamic State), who are having a run of Iraq, and some analysts now worry that ISIS will commit mass genocide against Iraq's Shi'a population if Baghdad falls. The war in Iraq started with Operation Shock and Awe but ended in a fizzle and, some would argue, in an epic exercise in human futility. 

To save Syria’s sovereignty and avert wider regional instability, rebel forces should be urged to negotiate with the ruling regime of President Bashar al Assad. Serious political reform cannot be achieved on the battlefield of an escalating, sectarian civil war. Washington’s siding with the rebels as it passively promotes the forceful removal of Assad has not worked out. By the time Assad is deposed, the Syrian state as we know it might well disappear.

After the first 20 minutes or so, a common thread emerges between each country’s histories: at one point or another, the United States intervened. Time after time, the U.S. would enter into a conflict that was waging within a Latin American country, and “settle” its dispute. The United States would leave the country with a new, American-trained, leader in its stead, with the hopes of improving trade relations with Latin America.