Month: May 2006

Death in Iraq. It is relentless and incessant. Know what it is like when scores of your fellow citizens are being killed every single day while the world proceeds unheedingly on? As a journalist, I’ve had but a taste of that poison during my eight months in Iraq. Try it out: be an Iraqi for … Continue reading “Downplaying the Dead”

Intelligence services across the world are busy analyzing the latest speeches of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Ayman al-Zawahri, the three leaders of the jihadist movement, released almost simultaneously at the end of April. Their hope and objective is to break al-Qaeda’s code and access valuable information about future attacks. Encrypted in those … Continue reading “Al-Qaeda’s Code”

There’s a lot of talk these days about splitting Iraq into three parts. It’s coming from almost every direction. Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, with an eye on his run on the White House, wrote in the New York Times that the U.S. government should create a new Iraq along the lines of Bosnia: the idea … Continue reading “The Iraqi Government Is the Iraqis’ Business”

Thank the gods for the U.S. government, and I mean that at all levels, local, state, and federal. What would we do without them watching out for us 24/7, preparing for whatever threats may come our way, including especially the Great 666 Threat, which is looming fast and furious: “With June 6, 2006, rapidly approaching, … Continue reading “War With Iran?”

Despite receiving some $8 billion a month in economic aid and military support over the past year, Iraq and Afghanistan rank among the world’s 10 weakest states, along with much of Central Africa, according to the "Failed States Index" for 2006 released here Tuesday. Iraq ranks number four – the same rating it received in … Continue reading “Iraq, Afghanistan Among Top Ten Failed States”

JERUSALEM – The often unruly Gaza Strip has become a hot zone of Palestinian frustration over the inability of the recently sworn-in Hamas government to pay civil servants. Many have reportedly not received salaries since March. Distressed police officers in the last few weeks briefly took control of several public buildings and threatened future attacks. … Continue reading “Internal Feuds Develop
Among Palestinians”

News that the Pentagon will soon release about a third of the prisoners still detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has prompted the U.S. media and many in the blogosphere to recall Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s 2002 statement referring to Guantanamo prisoners as "the worst of the worst." And as recently as June 2005, he said, "If … Continue reading “Gitmo Releases Suggest Numerous Mistakes”

After those weapons of mass destruction never appeared and Saddam’s al-Qaeda connection proved but a figment of the overly vivid neocon (and vice-presidential) imagination, the Bush administration wheeled out the shiniest of American exports, democracy. It had worked for Ronald Reagan in Central America in the 1980s, why not in Iraq, too? Suddenly, actual democratic … Continue reading “Exporting the American Model”

Supporters of the Bush administration’s approach to what is sometimes grandly (or grandiosely) called the Global War on Terror (GWOT), if accounts of some intra-administration discussions are accurate, have sometimes been fond of asserting that the world changed on Sept. 11, 2001. Critics of aspects of the attack on Iraq are sometimes derided as having … Continue reading “Cold Assumptions”

Mad CowIf Condi is going around saying that the UNSC has approved a deadline for Iranian compliance with IAEA demands, then just what is that deadline supposed to be? Does she mention a specific date? If there really was no deadline approved, then how does she expect to get away with such an outrageous lie?~ … Continue reading “Backtalk, May 3, 2006”