Month: April 2004

When terrorists plan to strike America, should they call in advance and make reservations? If not – if they aren’t specific about time and place – should President George W. Bush and the rest of the federal government be held blameless for failing to stop them? That’s been the view of the White House for … Continue reading “Their ‘Battle Stations’ Were No Defense”

If you need any more proof of how badly the occupation in Iraq is going, look no further than a couple of recent articles in those hotbeds of Bush-bashing, the Weekly Standard and the American Spectator. Neocon Pollyanna Fred Barnes, writing in the former last week, bemoans the enormity of the imperial burden and rattles … Continue reading “An Ally I Can Do Without”

This is “George Bush’s Vietnam,” railed Sen. Kennedy last week in a charge that angered Sen. John McCain. And by any traditional measure of war, McCain is right. While Vietnam lasted a decade and took 58,000 U.S. lives, Iraq has lasted a year and cost 650 US dead. Even the Filipino insurrection of 1899-1902 was … Continue reading “Soldier On, Escalate, or Get Out?”

Refugees Stream Out of Fallujah “As the struggle for Fallujah entered a fifth day, hundreds of women, children and the elderly streamed out of the city. Marines ordered Iraqi men of ‘military age’ to stay behind, sometimes turning back entire families if they refused to be separated.” This sure does sound familiar. Oh yeah, we … Continue reading “”

Everyone is assuming that the Bush administration meekly complied with the outcry coming from both sides of the aisle in Congress, declassifying and releasing the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) for August 6, 2001, with uncharacteristic speed. I did wonder about that, but now it turns out they weren’t so forthcoming after all. The text of … Continue reading “Redaction Alert!”

I knew there was very little media coverage in Falluja, and the entire city had been sealed and was suffering from collective punishment in the form of no water or electricity for several days now. With only two journalists there that I’d read and heard reports from, I felt pulled to go and witness the … Continue reading “Americans Slaughtering Civilians in Fallujah”

http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e040413.html

It was never going to be easy to keep a sense of perspective in the face of a terrorist campaign as violent as the one being waged by al-Qaida; some have found it harder than others. The claim by James Woolsey, the former CIA director, that we are in the process of fighting “World War … Continue reading “The War on Terror Misfired – Blame It All on the Neocons”

Here’s a story from Arabic folklore. A man returned to his village after an absence of several days. He met his best friend, and they sat down to drink tea. “Do you remember the man who offended me 25 years ago?” the man asked his friend. “Sure.” “Well, I killed him two days ago.” “Why … Continue reading “Vengeance, Time, and US Idiocy”

Condoleezza Rice’s much-anticipated testimony before the 9/11 Commission was widely touted as having deflected the critique proffered by former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke – that the Bushies were too fixated on Iraq to pay much attention to Al Qaeda. A few days after her appearance, however, it looks like she committed a fatal error when … Continue reading “Dark Suspicions About 9/11”