Editor's note: Justin Raimondo is traveling. His column will return Friday. The participation of the Sunnis in Iraq's recent election was hailed by the Bush administration and its supporters as a great victory for the war effort and solid evidence that the...
How Stands the Empire?
How long ago was it that you last heard some pundit blather on about America being "the greatest empire since Rome"? Quite a while, I imagine. For if the Iraqi insurgency has done nothing else, it has induced a sense of humility, and of the limits of American...
Backtalk, December 26, 2005
Syriana: It's Not About the OilMr. Peña refers to the "mysterious" Stan played by William Hurt – there is nothing mysterious about Stan. He works for the Rendon Group or the Lincoln Group or some other such private consulting contract spy organization. He is a...
Let’s Keep Our Eyes on the Prize
Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens is right when he denounces former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Although he and I disagree strongly about the wisdom of the U.S. government's war on Iraq – he favors it and I've opposed it from the get-go –...
Lump of Coal for Condi
If Santa has been keeping a list, Secretary of State Condi Rice will be lucky to find even a lump of coal in her Christmas stocking. Where on the list to begin? On the Korean peninsula, where the South Korean National Security Council rebuffed Washington's contingency...
Why the War Has Already Been Lost
The Bush administration has just provided a textbook demonstration of the successful manipulation of public opinion. By repeating the theme that the United States is winning the war in Iraq for weeks, George W. Bush has now convinced 60 percent of Americans that the...
Top Secret
I wish to announce that I have taken actions that have saved hundreds of American lives. What kinds of actions? That's classified. But since you write columns for a living, you must have dealt with some organizations. Who are they? That's classified. When did you take...
Drums in the Streets
The Protests The protests last Saturday that resulted in the jailing of 944 activists were breathtaking to behold and a breakthrough for the anti-WTO movement and the South Koreans in particular. All week the Koreans had been subjected to media scrutiny: Who are these...
Christmas in Malaysia
To say that Malaysia is not what I imagined would be an understatement of epic proportions. Situated just south of Thailand, north of Indonesia, and quite close to the equator, the country describes itself as officially "Islamic," and this, at least in the minds of...
Toward a Peace Culture
This is no week (at least for me) to go on about unwarranted searches and surveillance, or whether a Bush bump in approval ratings is due to superficially frank speeches, a growing economy, the reduction in gasoline prices, or some combination thereof, let alone the...