Month: July 2004

NEW YORK – Despite scandals over human rights abuses and war profiteering, private military contractors are expanding their presence overseas, and may even be involved in helping to draft the next U.S. defense budget. Currently more than 20,000 privately contracted employees are at work in Iraq, feeding U.S. troops, providing security, and rebuilding the occupied … Continue reading “Business Booming for Soldiers of Fortune”

In reading the Abu Ghraib articles Seymour Hersh wrote for the New Yorker in May (here, here, and here), what struck me about the revelations of abuse and torture was the similarity in detail to what I experienced in Vietnam 35 years ago. The one major difference has been the media’s willingness to embrace in … Continue reading “Vietnam’s Shadow Over Abu Ghraib”

“Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.” – H.L. Mencken A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from my sister, a thoughtful and intelligent modern liberal. The discussion turned to politics, … Continue reading “John Kerry’s Pure Wind”

ATHENS – The guns are not pointing at visitors, they do not need to. The men carrying them have visitors to the new Olympics stadium in their sight all the way. The men are carefully positioned to see there is not a moment anyone could be out of sight. A visitor begins to feel like … Continue reading “Athens Goes ‘Rambo’ on Security”

Every May, Sirbuz Khan, 26, makes his way north along the Karakorum Highway from Islamabad and spends the next six to seven months moving around China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region buying silk for his family’s cloth business. Business is good – for every five meters of pure white silk Khan buys, he can make a … Continue reading “Sino-Pak Policy: Carrot and the Stick”

Books keep pouring off the presses on the subject of why George W. Bush should not be reelected. I got four in my mailbox recently. Bush might be the biggest boon to book publishing since Harry Potter. The most serious of the four books is The Bubble of American Supremacy, by George Soros. The most … Continue reading “Throwing the Book at Bush”

Well, now we know that no matter who wins in November, we’re going to stay in Iraq as long as it takes and do whatever it takes to achieve final victory – whatever “victory” means. The election will, however, decide which country is next to have its “regime changed.” If Kerry is elected, it’ll be … Continue reading “Decision 2004: Iran or Sudan?”

BAGHDAD – The grass has all but disappeared off what used to be the football field of the Palestinian Haifa sports club on the edge of Baghdad. After more than a year as an improvised refugee camp that at one point housed some 2,000 people, it looks sun-bleached and bent by the wind. Hardly a … Continue reading “Iraq’s Palestinians Dispossessed Again”

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that we’re reliving the last days of the Roman Empire. Of course, that’s not all bad, especially if you like peeled grapes, gladiatorial games, and those cute little tunics on men: but it isn’t all fun and games, either, particularly when you get into the … Continue reading “A Question of Character”

The most dismaying development at the ongoing Democratic convention so far is the effort to convince Americans that the Democrats would be tougher than the Republicans on the issues of war, peace and national security. This essentially means that those who question the war in Iraq have no place to go if they want to … Continue reading “Out-Toughing the Republicans”