Civil libertarians and opposition political leaders are stepping up their efforts to pull back the "veil of secrecy" they claim has characterized the George W. Bush administration. In separate developments, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sought to...
A commission appointed by President Bush to analyze intelligence failures will be releasing its report today. According to The New York Times, the report "includes a searing critique of how the CIA and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein's political...
A major advocacy group charges that a Yemeni businessman captured in Egypt was handed over to U.S. authorities and "disappeared" for more than a year and a half before being sent to the Pentagon's Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Human Rights Watch has...
During her meetings with foreign leaders in Washington and the many world capitals she has visited recently, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sounded like a kindergarten teacher warning rowdy kids that if they won't behave, they could end up standing in the...
The Ongoing Balkans Hell Compared to, say, Kyrgyzstan these days, news coming from the Balkans makes the region appear downright calm. As usual, appearances are misleading. Taken separately, reports from the region don't mean much – but taken together, they paint...
Earlier this month, having long been bothered by the claims of various neocons that we were in "World War IV" (also known as "the Global War on Terrorism"), I wrote a piece, "Which War Is This Again?," considering the idea. I pointed out among other things...
In the last three decades, there has been little doubt in my mind that democratic institutions would soon replace or subsume the world's last remaining monarchies, including those in the Middle East. Monarchs could rule effectively when the world moved at a snail's...
On March 26, 2005, the streets of Taipei were choked with people from all over the island, citizens of a nation still known legally as the Republic of China (ROC), citizens who'd gathered in force to protest a new anti-secession law that had just been passed by the...
BEIRUT - The political upheaval that has engulfed Lebanon following the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri has given rise to fears of renewed sectarian bloodshed – and hopes that it can be avoided. The upheaval has resulted in an ongoing standoff...
Robert Novak told us last year that the U.S. was headed for a "quick exit" from Iraq – and in a recent column he's holding to this prediction, crowing that he was right about Condoleezza Rice ascending to the State Department, and her deputy Stephen Hadley taking...
