Month: October 2006

At least 32 American troops have been killed in Iraq this month. Approximately 300 have been wounded. The “battle for Baghdad” is going nowhere. A Marine friend just back from Ramadi said to me, “It didn’t get any better while I was there, and it’s not going to get better.” Virtually everyone in Washington, except … Continue reading “Why We Still Fight”

The nuclear test by North Korea has created a major tremor among Bush administration officials and the Democrats. The brunt of the debate is whether the Bush administration or the Clinton administration is responsible for Kim Jong-Il’s latest move. Sen. Hillary Clinton has placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Bush regime, which … Continue reading “How Not to Handle
Iran’s Nuke Aspirations”

Nikolas Gvosdev, editor of the National Interest, a foreign-policy magazine affiliated with the Nixon Center in Washington, D.C., has recently been trying to revitalize the stale discourse on U.S. global strategy in the capital of the world’s only remaining superpower. Gvosdev, whose magazine has been shaken up by post-Iraq-invasion ideological disputes (leading to the departure … Continue reading “A New Kind of Neocon?”

Updated at 11:30 p.m. EDT, Oct. 11, 2006 Early this morning, a American soldier died from wounds received during a roadside bomb blast. Forty-four Iraqis have also died and 96 were injured in other attacks, including an ammo dump fire where a GI and an Iraqi interpreter were “slightly wounded.” According to a new study … Continue reading “Wednesday: 44 Iraqis, 1 US Soldier Killed; 96 Injured Across Iraq”

Encouraging Japan to build nuclear weapons, shipping food aid via submarines, and running secret sabotage operations inside North Korea’s borders are among a raft of policy prescriptions pushed by prominent U.S. neoconservatives in the wake of Pyongyang’s nuclear test. Writing in publications from National Review online (NRO) to the New York Times, neoconservatives claim, contrary … Continue reading “Neocons Call for Action
Against N. Korea”

The announcement by North Korea that they have successfully tested a nuclear weapon in a remote region near the northernmost border with China – and may well explode another – was entirely predictable, given the course of the non-negotiations that have been going on since the 1990s. The Clinton administration tried to engage Pyongyang, with … Continue reading “North Korea’s Nukes:
Why Now?”

If there was any doubt North Korea had mastered the capacity to build nuclear bombs, it has been removed. We have clarity. The effect of North Korea’s forced entry into the nuclear club, joining the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, Israel, India, and Pakistan, may be as far-reaching as was Moscow’s entry in 1949. … Continue reading “An Asian Nuclear Arms Race?”

TORONTO – Washington’s preemptive war, in which Muslims are picked up, labeled Islamic terrorists, and then sent to a foreign state where under torture they confess wrongly to membership in al-Qaeda, is at the heart of what happened to an innocent Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, says Maureen Webb, an Ottawa lawyer and author of the … Continue reading “Could Arar Blunder Happen Again?”

Five years ago, when George W. Bush took office, North Korea didn’t claim membership in the nuclear club. Its plutonium-reprocessing facilities were frozen. It was even willing to negotiate away its missile program. Instead of pursuing the diplomatic route, the Bush administration tried to ignore Pyongyang. Then came the school-yard taunts such as lumping North … Continue reading “Pyongyang 1, Bush 0”

The recently released staff report on Iran issued by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee and the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on global terrorism conclude that the threats to U.S. national security are grave and increasing. These reports, which bolster arguments for a more aggressive "global war on terror," represent the latest in a long … Continue reading “Electoral Terrorism”