Month: March 2006

The reaction to the Harvard University study by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” [.pdf] has been fury by the Lobby and its partisans – and a demotion for Walt, who, it was announced shortly after the paper’s release, would be stepping down from his post as [academic] dean … Continue reading “The Lobby Strikes Back”

Moving with unusual speed, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush officially normalized military relations with Indonesia Wednesday when the State Department posted a formal notice permitting the sale of lethal military equipment to Jakarta for the first time in seven years. The announcement in the Federal Register came just two weeks after Condoleezza … Continue reading “US Lifts Ban on Sale of Arms to Indonesia”

The vast majority of the U.S. public appears to have grown thoroughly disillusioned with President George W. Bush’s crusade to spread democracy abroad, according to a new survey by one of the country’s premier public opinion analysts. The survey, designed by Daniel Yankelovich, also found that public concern about U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources … Continue reading “Public Continues to Sour on Bush’s Crusade”

Women were far better off under former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein, a women’s group has found after an extensive survey in Iraq. “Under the previous dictator regime, the basic rights for women were enshrined in the constitution,” Houzan Mahmoud from the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq told IPS in an interview. The group is … Continue reading “Rights Group: Iraqi Women Worse Off Under Occupation”

Israeli elections this week swept the right-wing Likud Party from power and installed a center-left government committed to peaceful coexistence with Palestine. Ehud Olmert, the leader of the new Israeli government, told the new Palestinian government that "we are ready to compromise and evacuate, under great pain, Jews living there [the West Bank of Palestine] … Continue reading “Israeli Electorate Rebukes Bush”

The top neocon of the 20th century was Woodrow Wilson. His supposed idealism, symbolized in the slogan "Make the world safe for democracy," resulted in untold destruction and death across the world for many decades. His deceit and manipulation of the prewar intelligence from Europe dragged America into an unnecessary conflict that cost the world and us … Continue reading “Making the World Safe for Christianity”

A disturbing trend noticeable in Iraq for quite some time now is that each aggressive Israeli military operation in the occupied territories results in a corresponding increase in the number of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. One of the first instances of this was the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin in March … Continue reading “An ‘Alliance’ of Violence”

In the 1993 movie comedy Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a weatherman who is reluctantly sent to cover a story about the rodent whose internal clock is believed to be affected by annual changes in the amount of daylight and who is supposed to start ending its hibernation on the second of February (marking the … Continue reading “‘Democratizing’ Iran:
A Case of Déjà Vu”

Three years into Operation Iraqi Freedom one thing should be apparent: Iraq was not a cakewalk. Maybe the fight against the Iraqi military on the open battlefield was a cakewalk, but everything since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003 – taking a victory lap by landing aboard the … Continue reading “The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly”

More than six months ago, a federal district judge ordered former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and other senior officials to testify in a lawsuit brought by an Egyptian who claims he was beaten and starved after being arrested following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He charged that he was violated with a flashlight while … Continue reading “Courts Scrutinize Post-9/11 Powers”