Month: December 2005

I am still inclined to believe that what we are seeing in the president’s series of speeches is the beginning of a change of policy toward gradual withdrawal of a substantial number of U.S. troops from Iraq, although it is apparently not in this president’s makeup to admit mistakes or even to acknowledge changing course, … Continue reading “Chinese Puzzles”

With Harb al-Mukhtar and Isam Rashid BAGHDAD – After the U.S. forces and the bombings, Iraqis are coming to fear those bands of men in masks who seem to operate with the Iraqi police. Omar Ahmed’s family learned what it can mean to run into the police, their supposed protectors. Omar was driving with two … Continue reading “Fundamentalist Death Squads Terrorize Iraqis”

Christmas came 11 days early for Donald Rumsfeld two years ago when the news broke that American forces had pulled Saddam Hussein from a spidery hole. During interviews about the capture, on CBS and ABC, the Pentagon’s top man was upbeat. And he didn’t have to deal with a question that Lesley Stahl or Peter … Continue reading “Rumsfeld’s Handshake Deal With Saddam”

Dreams "are chief nourishers in life’s feast," wrote Shakespeare in Macbeth. Indeed, while dreams offer a private means to explore inner reality and to gain unique, undeniable, personal experiences, psychologists also recognize that there is overwhelming evidence that dreams can be used to improve waking life, often immeasurably as storehouses of creativity. Many people often … Continue reading “Bush’s ‘Lucid Dreams’ Becoming Nightmares”

Arianna Huffington’s love affair with John McCain – it’s over! No, I don’t mean that kind of love affair, silly. The glamorous Grecian is pouting and bitterly disappointed because suddenly the man of her dreams is showing his true colors as a two-timing, shift-shaping, canny politician – not the Great White Knight that she once … Continue reading “The ‘Real’ McCain”

WASHINGTON – Despite a modest decline in hostility toward the United States, opinion in the Arab world appears to have hardened over the past year, according to the latest in an annual series of surveys of six Arab countries released here Wednesday by the Arab American Institute (AAI). That hardening appears due primarily to continued … Continue reading “Arabs Unimpressed by Bush Democracy Drive”

Amid charges that President George W. Bush and the U.S. Department of Justice are inflating the number of criminal prosecutions for terrorism, five cases shed light on the administration’s mixed record of convictions during 2005. In a Florida case, officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) falsified documents in an effort to cover repeated … Continue reading “Terror Net Yields Few Big Fish”

At the end of November, the Bush administration issued a 35-page document titled, “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” The new white paper does not represent a change of strategy: it says at the outset, “The following document articulates the broad strategy the president set forth in 2003….” But it does offer an authoritative statement … Continue reading “Questionable Assumptions”

As someone who promised to bring CEO know-how to the presidency, George Bush has topped all expectations. No dabbler, immediately after 9/11, he targeted two candidates for hostile takeovers. One, a backwater competitor that struck a blow to the enterprise, drew a swift neutralizing response. The other, an underperforming asset with extensive management deficiencies beckoned … Continue reading “The CEO President”

JERUSALEM – The Israeli rescue services had hardly finished evacuating the dead and injured from the scene of the suicide bomb blast in the coastal town of Netanya that killed five people on Monday, and already the speculation was under way. What will be the impact of the first bombing on the 2006 election campaign? … Continue reading “Netanya Bombing Scatters Political Questions”