Month: March 2005

Last November, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – as agents for the European Union – began negotiations with Iran on "a mutually acceptable long-term arrangement" that would (a) provide "objective guarantees" to the EU that Iran’s nuclear program was exclusively for "peaceful purposes," (b) guarantee future EU-Iranian nuclear, technological, and economic "cooperation," as well … Continue reading “Nuts to Bush”

A Little Background Music Shakar Odai, the head of the Internal Affairs Department of the Baghdad police, was recently interviewed by David Enders of Mother Jones magazine, who wrote: “‘More than 98’ percent of the police officers (a force known alike for its use of torture and its widespread corruption) returned to work after the … Continue reading “Deconstructing Iraq: Year Three Begins”

Why did Secretary of State Rice make India the first stop on her whirlwind Asian tour? Perhaps to see if she could sabotage yet one more Iranian deal-in-the-making. Not content with sabotaging the current Iranian negotiations with the European Union on trade and investment "normalization," Condi whizzed down to New Delhi to prevent India from … Continue reading “Sandbagging the NSG”

Demonstrations against the Iraq War scheduled to occur in nearly 600 cities in all 50 states this weekend, kicked off this Thursday across the street from the White House in Washington, DC as representatives of veterans groups and others signed a document pledging to encourage and support soldiers who, of their own conscience, refuse orders … Continue reading “Two Year Anniversary of Iraq War Kicks Off in DC”

I visited Baghdad as a reporter a few years before the US invasion. There were posters and statues of the ousted President Saddam Hussein everywhere. But not one checkpoint. Those lucky enough, or maybe unfortunate enough to report from the occupied Iraqi capital after March 2003, must have noticed how things have changed. It seems … Continue reading “A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Iraq Edition”

Let’s review now. It was bad intelligence that made President George W. Bush invade Iraq, right? No, you say, and you are correct; that is just White House spin. The “intelligence” was conjured up many months after President George W. Bush’s decision to attack. Now, two years and thousands of lives later, the story is … Continue reading “The Intelligence Made
Them Do It”

“Look! You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see? They’re after you! They’re after all of us! Our wives…our children…they’re here already! You’re next!” ~Dr. Miles Bennell, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers Before you or someone you love enlists, check out the lessons you’d better learn from the aptly-named article, “No Soldier Left Behind”: … Continue reading “The Body Snatchers: Kids, Did Your Recruiters Tell You About the Shallow Graves?”

Let me deal first with an issue raised by a reader who called me Monday morning after hearing a brief synopsis on the radio and asked if I had yet read the long piece in Sunday’s New York Times dealing with assertions from both the Iraqi interim government and the International Atomic Energy Agency that … Continue reading “Dealing with China”

WASHINGTON – The United States has charged a former employee of the U.S. construction giant Halliburton and a Kuwaiti subcontractor with defrauding the U.S. government of millions of dollars in a contract scam in Iraq, one day after an international watchdog group warned that lax oversight was threatening the reconstruction effort there. Two men – … Continue reading “Is Iraq Becoming the World’s Biggest Cash Cow?”

President Bush just told reporters that he has no intention of setting any timetable for withdrawal. “Our troops will come home when Iraq is capable of defending herself,” he said. Powerful pundits keep telling us that a swift pullout of U.S. troops would be irresponsible. And plenty of people have bought into that idea – … Continue reading “America’s Ready for Withdrawal – but Are Progressives?”