Month: December 2004

It didn’t take long for the supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, the West’s Ukrainian sock puppet, to point to the KGB as the perpetrators of the poisoning of their candidate with a major dose of dioxin: "When asked by ABC News’ Bill Weir if the Russian government, and specifically President Vladimir Putin, had anything to do … Continue reading “The Ukrainian Template”

For the Pentagon, Xmas is an everyday affair. And the wonderful thing – for those who make its presents – is that there’s never a December 26th. Unlike the rest of us, the Pentagon, which evidently doesn’t keep its sales slips, never rushes to its nearest arms manufacturer and returns that crush of unwanted or … Continue reading “Giving the Gift of War”

"Old Europe" is blocking U.S. efforts to find an exit strategy for Iraq. Further evidence emerged on Thursday that Old Europe holds the only key to the door from Iraq marked "Exit," but don’t expect to see it used any time soon. After the reconquest of Fallujah (Fallujah II), the field for American military options … Continue reading “Plenty of Strategy, Just No Exit”

David Sanger – a New York Times reporter – has actually visited the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and interviewed its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. Sanger’s resulting report – entitled “When a Virtual Bomb May Be Better Than the Real Thing” – appeared last Sunday. Until now, Sanger and other media sycophants have … Continue reading “What ElBaradei Said”

A while back in 2003, there was a lot of commentary and partisan whining on the lack of an "exit strategy" for Iraq. Bush got us into a quagmire, and we can’t get out! In May of this year, William Pfaff suggested playing to Iraqi "nationalism," as well as a complicated list of immunities and … Continue reading “Another Iraq Exit Strategy”

David Sanger’s recent interview with Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has resulted in a New York Times article about "virtual nukes." What is a "virtual” nuke? Well, apparently, it’s a nuke that doesn’t yet exist, but conceivably could, soon. Sanger claims that if a state can convince the world … Continue reading “Virtual Nukes”

To appreciate the breathtaking magnanimity expressed by this short slogan, one needs to remember its context. Imagine: a foreign army occupies your village for decades, reduces you to subjects without any rights, arrests you arbitrarily, savagely tortures the arrested, and, on top of it all, sends mighty bulldozers to erect a gigantic wall on your … Continue reading “The Third Intifada”

Blowback is a term invented by the Central Intelligence Agency to describe the unintended consequences of policies kept secret from the American people. Chalmers Johnson’s excellent book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, helped popularize the term. Originally intended for internal use only, blowback increasingly characterizes global reaction to Bush administration policies in … Continue reading “Iraq Blowback Is Global and Growing”

Every time Iraqi soldiers and policemen boogie away from combat, the standard answer that comes out of the U.S. government is that they need to be "trained up" better. That’s nonsense. Training teaches technique; it does not teach the will to fight. Given the history of Iraq and its culture, nobody can say that the … Continue reading “We Are the Problem”

In the summer of 1994, I was part of a four-person Christian Peacemaker Team dedicated to filing reports on human rights conditions in Jeremie, located in the southern finger of Haiti. When I arrived, I spent one day in Port au Prince, waiting to travel by ferry to the tiny coastal town of St. Helene. … Continue reading “Burying Water, Hiding Truth”