Month: June 2005

It appears that President Bush is determined to make John Bolton our next ambassador to the United Nations. Why? Well, ever since the Soviet Union disintegrated, the UN and its enforcement agency – the Security Council – have more often than not thwarted what our neo-crazies wanted to do. The refusal of the Security Council … Continue reading “Ambassador Bolton’s Agenda”

From The Washington Post to The Wall Street Journal to the Financial Times, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is being hailed for her latest public scolding of America’s Arab allies. In what columnist David Ignatius calls the “signature line” of her speech at The American University in Cairo, Rice declared: “For 60 years, my country, … Continue reading “A Scolding From Miss Rice”

"Where you stand determines what you see, and how you live." That’s how Voices in the Wilderness members began our statement explaining why we’d decided to stay in Baghdad during the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing of Iraq. During the long war of the economic sanctions, we had stood at the bedsides of numerous mothers … Continue reading “Where You Stand Determines What You See”

Could the President of the United States ever argue that he has the power and the right – and even the duty – to take any American citizens into custody he chooses, throw them into prison forever, torture them at will, and never even charge them with a crime? The question has long been moot. … Continue reading “You Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Trial!”

Recent revelations that the United States successfully blocked a call by NATO for an international investigation of the May 13 massacre of hundreds of civilians by the government of the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan serves as yet another reminder of the insincerity of the Bush administration’s claims for supporting freedom and democracy in the … Continue reading “US Support for Repression in Uzbekistan Belies Pro-Democracy Rhetoric”

Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Washington’s image in Europe, Canada and much of the Islamic world remains broadly negative, according to the latest in a series of surveys of public opinion in 16 countries sponsored by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (PGAP). While some of the hostility, particularly in Muslim countries immediately … Continue reading “US Image Abroad Still Sinking”

Despite intense effort by John Bolton and the neocrazies to get rid of him, Mohamed ElBaradei has just been elected to a third term as Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A principal function of the IAEA – established in 1957 – is “To establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable … Continue reading “ElBaradei Wins”

Back in September 2002 James Webb, assistant secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, raised a specter that has come back to haunt us. “The issue before us,” he wrote in the Washington Post, “is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether … Continue reading “A Thirty Years War?”

One question Americans should be asking the Bush administration is why it wishes to do such an expensive favor for the Iraqi people. I cannot think of any instance in which the federal government has been willing to spend $1 billion a week and 1,700 lives just to improve conditions in any one of the … Continue reading “Expensive Favor”

The cry is going up to get us out of Iraq, and just as surely – and loudly – the counter-cry is also rising: don’t “cut and run!” The neoconservatives’ big guns are being wheeled out, with David Brooks and Max Boot – pontificating from the pages of the New York Times and the Los … Continue reading “Iraq: What Price ‘Victory’?”