Month: December 2005

Rigoberto Alpizar, a gentle Christian man with a loving family and a lot of friends, did not deserve to be shot to death by two federal goons in a jetway at Miami International Airport. What is the duty of air marshals? It is to prevent terrorists from taking over an airplane. How can a man … Continue reading “Rigoberto Alpizar, RIP”

In his address to the American people last Sunday evening, President George W. Bush said, “Yet now there are only two options before our country: victory or defeat.” As usual, Mr. Bush is wrong. Victory is not an option, and it never was. The strategic objectives the Bush administration set for this war – a … Continue reading “Two False Options”

In defending his edict authorizing surveillance of phone calls and e-mails originating in the United States, President Bush reiterated legal arguments, long made by his intellectual Praetorians, that imbue the White House with wartime powers no different from those exercised by a Roman emperor. As Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer pointed out in the Washington … Continue reading “Bush’s Wartime Dictatorship”

For several months – actually, since the U.S. invasion of Iraq – neoconservative propagandists have been trying to counter-spin the depressing reality in Mesopotamia that we’ve been watching on television by celebrating several "tipping points" that were supposed to mark the victory of freedom in Baghdad: The bringing down of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad; … Continue reading “Turning the Corner in Iraq – Yet Again”

http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e051220.html

Recent polling on the views of the U.S. public about the "Global War on Terror" (GWOT) suggests increasing ambivalence, confusion, and lack of reliable information. Events over the past few days, topped by the revelation that President George W. Bush ordered secret warrantless wiretaps of phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens, are unlikely to … Continue reading “The Fog of the War on Terror”

Amid efforts by a bipartisan coalition in Congress to ban torture and inhumane treatment of detainees in the "war on terror," a major U.S. human rights groups charged Monday that Washington ran a secret prison in Afghanistan where suspected terrorists were held in total darkness for days and even weeks at a time from 2002 … Continue reading “Group Exposes CIA’s ‘Dark Prison’ in Afghanistan”

[Note: This is the second of two pieces focused on reevaluating the costs of the Sept. 11 attacks. In the first, “Shark-bit World,” I took the New York Times back to the week before Sept. 11, 2001, time-machine style, and found a forgotten world in which the Bush administration, with its poll numbers dropping and … Continue reading “The Forgotten Anthrax Attacks of 2001”

Watch Ron Paul’s speech on video. Our country faces major problems. No longer can they remain hidden from the American people. Most Americans are aware the federal budget is in dismal shape. Whether it’s Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or even the private pension system, most Americans realize we’re in debt over our heads. The welfare … Continue reading “The Blame Game Can Wait”

The dilemma the U.S. has had for a half-century is that the priorities it must impose on its budget and its plans have never guided its actual behavior and action. It has always believed, as well it should, that Europe and its control would determine the future of world power. But it has fought in … Continue reading “The Empire’s Dilemma”