Month: November 2005

How do you convince military planners to prepare detailed plans for a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear nation, without having them think you are a madman? Use the dachshund principle, as illustrated by this old story: A small boy asked his father how wireless telegraphy works. “First let me explain how telegraphy works with wires,” … Continue reading “Nuking Iran Without the Dachshund”

I‘m thankful for so many things this Thanksgiving that it’s going to take me an entire column just to adequately describe them. Indeed, I’m already so loaded down with gifts that I don’t need Christmas. My cup runneth over! For an old libertarian “isolationist” like me this holiday season is a bountiful time, one that … Continue reading “A Feast of Scandal”

Bertolt Brecht wrote this of empire long ago: “Who built the seven gates of Thebes? The books are filled with names of kings. Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? … In the evening when the Chinese wall … Continue reading “American Ziggurats”

This Thanksgiving, those of us who look forward to the possibility of a future in which war is more often averted than anticipated with relish, enhancing the chances for peace and the freedom that flourishes best in an atmosphere of peace, have a great deal to be thankful for. The Bush administration is unraveling before … Continue reading “Beginning of the End”

‘A Conspiracy So Vast…’Great article at Antiwar.com!I was wondering if you have read about the Judy Miller 9/11 attack warnings that were never published (except indirectly as shown below).In July of 2001 Judy Miller had top secret intelligence that a major terrorist attack was imminent. Who in the White House also knew?See this link: “The … Continue reading “Backtalk, November 25, 2005”

On Nov. 22, Britain’s Daily Mirror published a startling allegation: In an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush proposed bombing the Arab TV network al-Jazeera’s international headquarters in Qatar. The report was based on a memo stamped “Top Secret” that had been leaked by a Cabinet official in … Continue reading “Beyond That Memo: Bush Wanted al-Jazeera Gone”

A year after the U.S.-led "Operation Phantom Fury" damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools, and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction, and high rates of illness. The Study Center for Human Rights and Democracy (SCHRD), based in Fallujah, estimates the number of … Continue reading “Life Goes On in Fallujah’s Rubble”

The surprising degree of consensus reached by the main Iraqi factions at the Arab League-orchestrated Reconciliation Conference in Cairo last weekend sharply undercuts the unilateral, guns-and-puppets approach of the Bush administration to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. The common demand, by Shia and Kurds as well as Sunnis, for a timetable for withdrawal of occupation … Continue reading “From Cairo, Hope”

This week, there was a brief glimmer of hope that U.S. forces might have killed the most wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. For many, Zarqawi has come to represent the Iraqi insurgency. Indeed, his stature in the eyes of the Bush administration is equal to Osama bin Laden: the reward for Zarqawi’s capture … Continue reading “The Zarqawi Dilemma”

Since I’ve been spending so much time in recent months reading and writing about President George W. Bush, his neoconservative advisers, and the mess in Iraq, I decided to take some time off these current topics and read a very well-written and well-researched life history of one of America’s Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. But I … Continue reading “Bush: The Lord North of Today”