Month: June 2006

Just when one thinks the Empire is not capable of any further hypocrisy, word comes from Brussels that the mandarins of the EUSSR are "a little worried" about Serbia. Come again? After 15 years of demonizing the Serbs, blaming them for every incident of violence in the Balkans, bombing them in two countries and overseeing … Continue reading “Empire’s False Concern”

With Ali Fadhil RAMADI – As the threat of a giant U.S. military operation in Ramadi lingers and sporadic clashes plague the city daily, residents struggle to cope, both inside and outside the sealed city. A week spent in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad, reveals that residents are suffering from lack … Continue reading “Ramadi Residents Struggle to Survive”

Although on the surface, things have been going well lately for President Bush on Iraq – the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the installing at long last of a permanent government in Iraq, and a vote of support in the U.S. House of Representatives for the president’s Iraq policy – it is easy to forget … Continue reading “Win One for the Gipper (Ayatollah Khamenei)”

Remember Saddam’s “killing fields”? By now, the Bush administration has turned whole swathes of Iraq into a charnel house. Last week Hala Jaber, a fine British reporter, returned to Baghdad and visited one of today’s killing fields – that city’s morgue into which, from what she calls “the nightly slaughter,” approximately 6,000 corpses have been … Continue reading “The Iraqi Insurgency and Us”

This Sunday’s sacred ritual of Mass, bagels, and tea with the Grumpy Old Men’s Club was rudely disrupted by the headline of the day’s Washington Post: "U.S. Airstrikes Rise in Afghanistan as Fighting Intensifies." Great, I thought; it’s probably cheaper than funding a recruiting campaign for the Taliban and lots more effective at creating new … Continue reading “Air Strikes in Afghanistan: Aargh!”

On Tuesday, June 13, while Mr. Bush spent a brave five hours in the “green zone” of Baghdad with puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, at least 36 people were killed across Iraq amid a wave of bombings. Eighteen of those died in a spasm of bombings in the oil city of Kirkuk in the … Continue reading “‘Operation Forward Together’: Deeper Into the Quagmire”

In 2005, Mohamed ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his outstanding work in the international control of nuclear weapons. In 2003, ElBaradei had proposed a verifiable ban on the production of weapons-grade fissile material – a positive move that would severely limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In a vote of the Disarmament … Continue reading “Who’s Against a Ban on
Fissile Material?”

According to the United Nations statute establishing the International Atomic Energy Agency: "The Agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health, and prosperity throughout the world. It shall ensure, so far as it is able, that assistance provided by it or at its request or under its supervision … Continue reading “Iran’s Rights Compromised”

When John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the heavyweight of the realist school of international affairs, and Stephen M. Walt, former dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, published their now famous essay on "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," the outcry from all the … Continue reading “The Assassins”

Editor’s note: The following speech was delivered in the House of Representatives on June 16, 2006. Mr. Speaker, I requested this Special Order to read a statement that I earlier placed in the Record during the debate on the Iraq war resolution. I did not request time during the debate because it was obvious that … Continue reading “Iraq War Contrary to Conservatism”