Month: November 2005

According to news reports, at a U.S. Naval Academy speech on Wednesday, President Bush will announce plans for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. It will be diverting to watch the propagandists at Fox "News" flip-flop with the White House line and explain that now is the time to cut and run after all. A month … Continue reading “The Grave Threat Is the Bush Administration”

When someone is accused of a crime, a key component of determining their innocence or guilt is assigning a motive – and this remains the biggest mystery of the Scooter Libby affair. Why did the vice president’s then-chief of staff embark on a campaign to expose a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, and put her and … Continue reading “Scooter’s Motive”

Back in mid-October, I noted that informal “walls” and exhibits to honor those Americans (and sometimes Iraqis) who fell – and continue to fall – in the Bush administration’s war and occupation of choice in Iraq have been arising on- and off-line for some time. I suggested then that “the particular dishonor this administration has … Continue reading “Bush’s Expanding ‘Fallen Legion’”

Many in my profession – journalism – were understandably outraged to discover that in a get-together with his partner in crime Tony Blair in April 2004, President Bush allegedly made a bad-taste gag about bombing the Qatar headquarters of the Arab TV channel al-Jazeera. There is a memo doing the rounds, leaked by two British … Continue reading “Al-Jazeera, Serbia, and Liberal Amnesia”

“Is the United States now going to cut and run in Iraq?” asks Bronwen Maddox, foreign editor of the London Times. While the answer from President Bush remains a defiant “No!” the question is now being raised by the most hawkish of his backers. And understandably so. For John McCain’s call for sending 10,000 more … Continue reading “Is Defeat Now an Option?”

Sometimes, when I recommend that people read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (the full title is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations), I am met with a supercilious snort, as if nothing that was written in 1776 could be relevant to today. A very common attitude seems to be, … Continue reading “Adam Smith’s Economic Case Against Imperialism”

JERUSALEM – A reliable, pragmatic leader who is tough on Palestinian violence but willing to make calculated sacrifices for peace. A leader who does not trust the Palestinians, but understands that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank cannot continue in its current form. That is how Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will present himself to … Continue reading “Sharon Minus Likud Equals … What?”

According to Bob Woodward, we’re not to worry: "When the story comes out I’m quite confident we’re going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter. And that somebody learned that Joe Wilson’s wife had worked at the CIA and helped him get this job going to Niger to see if … Continue reading “Outing Brewster Jennings”

Re-igniting Bosnia In November 1995, after months of cajoling, threatening, scheming, plotting, bombing, and blackmailing, the American-organized peace conference in Dayton, Ohio, resulted in a peace agreement that ended the hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The agreement, commonly referred to in Bosnia as “Dayton,” was a compromise between the idea of unitary, centralized state championed by the … Continue reading “A Desert Called Peace”

I fear the vice president has had one too many heart attacks. His mind seems to have slipped its moorings and is drifting out into the sea of fantasy. Dick Cheney was the misleader in chief prior to the war in Iraq, and in a recent speech in which he chastised people for suggesting that, … Continue reading “Slipped His Moorings”