Month: December 2005

Consider this latest piece by former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, who writes regularly for TomDispatch on the Plame case and Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation, as my way of signing off with good cheer until the New Year. In our embattled American world, De la Vega suggests just the kind of optimism that … Continue reading “Shoot the Moon and Forget About the Bell Curve”

I‘ll say this for Vice President Dick Cheney: he puts it right out there, whether it is trying to ensure legal protection for those torturing prisoners, or insisting – as he did on Tuesday – that a wartime president "needs to have his powers unimpaired." Supporters of this view are dredging up quotes from former … Continue reading “Will Republican Senators Save the Republic?”

Three days before Christmas, the Bush administration launched a new salvo of bright spinning lies about the Iraq war. “In an interview with reporters traveling with him on an Air Force cargo plane to Baghdad,” the Associated Press reported Thursday morning, Donald Rumsfeld “hinted that a preliminary decision had been made to go below the … Continue reading “A New Salvo of
Bright Spinning Lies”

David Aaronovitch, the London Times columnist who supported the war in Iraq, is sorry. He is sorry “for Abu Ghraib and for Donald Rumsfeld. For not understanding the insurgents. For the looting. For the dire planning.” He’s also sorry for “the election workers assassinated, the police trainees blown up, the parents of children caught in … Continue reading “The Humanitarian With the War Machine”

World Peace Forum Moves to Create International Peace Secretariat Kudos to you for attending the Malaysian peace seminar. I missed it as I could not get a firm seat to get back home. I would have loved to have met you guys. Your Web site is great. Your thoughts are great, and it gives us … Continue reading “Backtalk, December 23, 2005”

The strong turnout in last week’s parliamentary elections in Iraq may have been just the kind of civic demonstration that President George W. Bush needed to restore some confidence in a weary public that Washington’s adventure in the country may not turn out to be such a disaster after all. But one week after a … Continue reading “Iraqis Spoke, but Hardly in Unison”

As those loyal to President George W. Bush circle the wagons to aggressively defend his program of conducting surveillance of phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens, a judge on the court set up to review requests for such actions has resigned, apparently in protest. At the same time, a prominent Republican senator promised to … Continue reading “Congress to Probe Domestic Spying”

I went to see the new Warner Bros. political thriller Syriana over the weekend (going to the movies is a rare treat when you’re the parent of a young child). For most people, movies are entertainment and escapism (for that, I took my 6-year-old daughter to Chicken Little, which is my more usual moviegoing fare … Continue reading “Syriana: It’s Not About the Oil”

Balkans and the Demise of Principles As 2005 draws to a close, the ruined remnants of what used to be Yugoslavia are nowhere near the peace or prosperity both their demagogic leaders and imperial interventionists have promised. Saddled with the heritage of state supremacy, total war, and ethnic politics, people of the region are destroying … Continue reading “The Road to Serfdom”

(With Arkan Hamed) BAGHDAD – Despite the parliamentary elections last week and temporary ease in violence, Iraqis remain bitter about the outgoing year, and skeptical of 2006. “As a doctor I usually travel daily from home to college,” said Um Feras, a doctor of physics at Baghdad University who asked that her last name be … Continue reading “Iraqis Glad 2005 Over, Have Dim Hopes for 2006”