The Washington foreign policy elite finds itself on pins and needles this week awaiting a response from the neoconservative heavyweights at the Weekly Standard magazine to a scorching denunciation by one of their most venerable fellow travelers, Francis Fukuyama, in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Fukuyama, best known for his post-Cold War essay proclaiming the …
Continue reading “‘Leninists!’ Cries Neocon Nabob, Suing for Divorce”
The United States and Iran were on a course to work closely together on the war against al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002 – until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped in to scuttle that cooperation, according to officials who were involved at the time. After the Sept. 11 …
Continue reading “How Neocons Sabotaged Iran’s Help on al-Qaeda”
The Democrats are getting ready for the upcoming election season. Having done so poorly for the past, well, decade or so, they may finally be seeing an opportunity to capitalize on one of the Bush administration’s many misfortunes. Whether it’s Jack Abramoff’s lobbying sleaze, Cheney’s happy trigger finger, or Scooter Libby’s indictment, they sure have …
Continue reading “Redeployment: Another Election-Year Stunt”
In a repeat of the calculated insults to the Arab world coming fast and furious these days, Democratic politicians, including putative presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, are raising a ruckus over a deal in which Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation, a U.K. company that manages the ports of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami, …
Continue reading “Hating Arabs”
Over a week ago, Vice President Cheney managed to put a couple of hundred pellets of birdshot into his 78-year-old friend and Texas Republican Party builder, Harry Whittington. As the event turned into a national joke, edged with anger, and a late night spectacle, it was natural that the subject of Iraq would arise. After …
Continue reading “A Quailhawk’s Cakewalk”
Last June, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters, "If you think of the people down there [at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba], these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They’re terrorists, trainers, bomb-makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden’s] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker." Yet two recent reports, based …
Continue reading “Reports Find Tenuous Terror Ties at Guantanamo”
Find illegal activity in the U.S. national security agency you work for. Report it to your superiors. Get rewarded by being demoted or having your security clearance revoked – tantamount to losing your career – while those whose conduct you’ve reported get promoted. This was the picture painted to a House of Representatives committee last …
Continue reading “At Spy Agencies, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”
http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e060221.html
"In reviewing the history of the English government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes." – Thomas Paine, Rights of Man What would happen if someone in …
Continue reading “Don’t Be an Accessory to Murder”
Gholamali Haddad-Adel, "speaker" of Iran’s parliament – in Cuba, last week – dismissed the possibility of a U.S. preemptive attack against Iran, finding it "impossible" to believe that the U.S. would want "to repeat the experience of Iraq." “We hope the United States is not so stupid,” he said. Presumably, Haddad-Adel meant to say, "We …
Continue reading “March Madness” 
