Month: June 2006

with Alaa Hassan BAGHDAD – The Iraqi government has decided to launch its own investigation into the killing of 24 people by U.S. Marines in the western town Haditha last November. The raid came to light after a local Iraqi videotaped the killings. The tape told a story dramatically different from the bland assertion by … Continue reading “Multiply Haditha By Thousands”

As you listen to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deliver her ultimatum to the Iranian mullahs, imagine you are a passenger on a hijacked airliner, headed towards Iran. You already know what the neo-crazy hijackers did to Iraq, shortly after Bush-Cheney-Rice delivered a similar ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. “The pursuit by the Iranian regime of … Continue reading “Hijacked by the Neocrazies”

In the 1980s, when I was on the staff of Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, I traveled regularly to Maxwell Air Force Base (whose claim to fame is not one, but two golf courses) to give the slide-show briefing of the Congressional Military Reform Caucus to Squadron Officers’ School. After one such session, an Air … Continue reading “The Perils of Threat Inflation”

President Bush teared up on Memorial Day and said we must complete the mission in Iraq to honor the 18,000 wounded and 2,400-plus dead. Well, I have a question. What is the mission? Is it to overthrow Saddam Hussein? He’s been overthrown and is awaiting execution by a kangaroo court we selected to do the … Continue reading “What Is the Mission?”

The Haditha massacre, as it will doubtless be known, tells us something about this war we are fighting, and something about ourselves as Americans – or, rather, as creatures who have become a little less American in the post-9/11 era. What that something amounts to, according to your view of the war and of U.S. … Continue reading “The Meaning of Haditha”

Amid increasing tensions between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s nuclear program, the George W. Bush administration is courting the Persian/Arab Gulf monarchies with the same proposal it offered them 15 years ago after the first Gulf War – purchase U.S. armory in the billions and Washington will protect you against your Persian nemesis. But today, … Continue reading “Gulf States Rethink US-Led Security Alliance”

You never can be too early when it comes to an anniversary. It’s barely June, but a quick look down the road reminds us that the 20th anniversary of the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra Affair lies just ahead this November. As Greg Grandin reminds us, Irangate (as it came to be known in the wake of … Continue reading “Iran-Contra All Over Again”

Compare the two American dramas that the world was watching last Thursday. In Houston, Texas, two former Enron executives, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, were convicted of fraud and conspiracy for their role in the energy trader’s collapse in 2001 and could end up spending the rest of their lives in prison. The jury concluded … Continue reading “Iraq Like Water Off a Duck’s Back to Bush, Blair”

Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism Charles Peña Potomac Books 272 pp. If critics of the Bush administration are setting themselves up for a stay at Gitmo, then Charles Peña will end up spending a long time in a particularly small cell. A senior fellow with the Coalition for a … Continue reading “Readings in the Age of Empire”

ARBIL – Sipping tea at a café in Arbil, Moayed Rafiq, 25, watches news of a car bombing in Baghdad on an Arab television channel. Others around him also watch, quietly. “When I see this every day on TV, I think there is no need for us to tie our destiny with Iraq,” Moayed said. … Continue reading “Iraqi Kurds Keep an Eye on Independence”