Month: June 2005

"Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle." – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn When Bush decided, prior to Sept. 11, to attack Iraq, he committed himself to lies and deceit. As his British co-conspirators realized, only victory could save them from the consequences. On June 27, General George Casey, U.S. commander … Continue reading “A Defeat Bred in Deceit”

The FBI is carrying out "unwarranted investigations for religious or political reasons," according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which charges that "the agency has sunk back into the kind of political monitoring it did in the 1960s and 1970s." The Washington-based advocacy group said a series of FBI inquiries across the country shows … Continue reading “Rights Groups Detail Growing Police State”

http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e050628.html

Ten days ago, in one of southern Tehran’s poor neighborhoods, I interviewed some voters in line to cast ballots for Iran’s next president. After a while, when an official at the polling station asked who I thought would win, I repeated the conventional media wisdom: "Rafsanjani." "It will never happen," he replied flatly. "I promise … Continue reading “From Tehran to Washington, Demagogues Rule”

Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai is not a democratic leader – and he doesn’t play one on Fox News television. If a “[pick favorite color] Revolution” were to take place in the streets of Hanoi, one could expect that PM Khai and the other Communist Party bosses would prove to be quite ruthless in … Continue reading “Trading, Not Invading: US Hums Different Tune on Vietnam”

Last Friday, the price of light sweet crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange for August delivery closed 16 cents short of $60/barrel – the highest price ever and an ironic outcome for the millions of Americans who believe that cheap oil was the reason for Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Equally shocking to Americans … Continue reading “The Last Throes of US Dominance”

Iraq: What Price ‘Victory’? Justin Raimondo recently asked: what price victory? I’m not sure victory is now what the Republicans are after, except the illusion that they are still after it. My reasoning for this comes from Karl Rove’s comments about liberals and the war effort. For those who haven’t been paying attention, Karl Rove, … Continue reading “Backtalk June 28, 2005”

The idea that this is a Republican war, that we were lured into Iraq under false pretenses exclusively by George W. Bush and his neocon advisers, with no responsibility or input from the Democrats, is a partisan myth: we are in there, and are staying in there, to a large degree because the Democrats not … Continue reading “Biden’s BS on Iraq”

TEHRAN – Promising a better life to the society’s downtrodden, the son of a blacksmith and mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad, has stunned Iran by beating an establishment figure to become the nation’s new president. While Ahmadinedjad’s promises of "fighting corruption, poverty, and discrimination" appealed to the minds and hearts of millions of jobless youth … Continue reading “Iran’s Hardliners Reinvent Themselves”

For the first time since 1942, Japan has resumed the strategic offensive. Since the beginning of the year, Japan has claimed the island of Takeshima, now occupied by South Korea; seized control of an area in the South China Sea also claimed by Beijing; and, most ominously, announced that Tokyo might intervene militarily to defend … Continue reading “The Sun Also Rises”