Month: February 2004

Ali Jarbawi has long seen the creation of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, as the best solution to the Middle East conflict. But the professor of political science from Bir Zeit university in the West Bank is not sure any more. Jarbawi believes the two-state solution is on the verge of … Continue reading “‘Hello, I’m Israeli-Palestinian’”

As George W. Bush stumbled, mumbled, and grumbled his way through a special edition of Meet the Press with Tim Russert, an unspoken question kept rising above his droning voice: is this stammering dolt really the President of the United States? On the Missing WMD Commission: “There is a lot of investigations going on about … Continue reading “The President Speaks”

If a "rogue nation" or swarthy men with foreign accents did it, we know what we’d call it. What the world’s most powerful military did to the village of Abou Siffa must be called the same thing: terrorism. A small citrus grove was the last stop on our tour of this farming hamlet on the … Continue reading “Terror by Another Name”

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes (I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts) -Virgil Sharon’s recently announced intention to unilaterally evacuate the occupied Gaza Strip did come as a surprise. Up to the last couple of months, the so-called founding father of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories had insisted that no settlement would … Continue reading “Sharon’s Escape from Alcatraz”

President George W. Bush’s choice to co-chair his commission to investigate intelligence failures prior to the Iraq War is a longtime, right wing political activist closely tied to the neo-conservative network that led the pro-war propaganda campaign. Federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman, who will share the chairmanship with former Virginia Democratic Senator Charles Robb, … Continue reading “Co-Chair of Bush Iraq Panel Part of Neocon Network”

There is plenty of blame to go around for the mistakes made by going to war in Iraq, especially now that it is common knowledge Saddam Hussein told the truth about having no weapons of mass destruction, and that Al Qaida and 9/11 were in no way related to the Iraqi government. Our intelligence agencies … Continue reading “Congress Abandoned Its Duty on War”

About the middle of this month, Russia will stage the largest strategic nuclear maneuvers since 1982. These maneuvers will involve the test-firing of intercontinental ballistic missiles, both from land and sea; the test-firing of cruise missiles from strategic bombers; and even the launch of a military satellite. Publicly, according to the Moscow Times, Russian generals … Continue reading “Practicing Nuclear War”

Bulgarians were not expecting that some of them would die in action alongside coalition forces in Iraq long before they could join NATO. Six Bulgarian soldiers were killed and 27 wounded in a major suicide attack in Iraq late December. Around 500 Bulgarian troops currently support coalition efforts to establish peace in post-war Iraq. The … Continue reading “Bulgaria Moves from Backyard to Frontline”

p>Max Weber must be smiling today, as his much-contested thesis on the Protestant Work Ethic is proved once again in the arguments of those who support a generalized American war against the Islamic world – as opposed to a careful, ongoing hunt for Al-Qaeda terrorists. In pointing to the political and economic backwardness of the … Continue reading “No Peace, No Freedom”

You have to give CIA director George Tenet credit: he managed to pack more obfuscations, evasions, and outright lies into what couldn’t have been more than a half hour speech than one might have thought humanly possible. The purpose of Tenet’s peroration was to get the President, and also his own Agency, off the hook … Continue reading “Neocons Busted!”