Month: October 2006

(Released under agreement with The Killid Group. With reporting contributed by IPS correspondent Ann Ninan.) KABUL – Anxiety has replaced the hope of a new beginning in Afghanistan’s turbulent history two years after Hamid Karzai was made president of the war-torn country with the support of a U.S.-led coalition. An upsurge in armed attacks and … Continue reading “Hope Loses Out to Fear on Kabul Streets”

The president concentrated so hard on the two members of his infamous “axis of evil” that didn’t have nuclear weapons that he neglected the one that does. North Korea announced that it would test a nuclear weapon, and now it has done so. I’m sure the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, said, “Woe is … Continue reading “Presidential Neglect”

This year the Israelis and various neocrazy media sycophants have increasingly been comparing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler. That’s a ridiculous comparison, of course. Iran’s president is almost powerless and occupies in the Iranian government a position roughly equivalent to our Secretary of Interior. Chancellor Hitler, on the other hand, shortly after the … Continue reading “Nero, Not Hitler”

It is the single most important statistic regarding the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq. How many Iraqis have been killed? 655,000. 655,000 Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. I have worked for eight months in Iraq as a journalist, witnessing the carnage on a daily basis, … Continue reading “Excess Death in Iraq”

No one knows exactly how many Iraqi civilians have died from the war’s violence since the invasion of their country. The new study from public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University estimates that the number of those deaths is around 601,000, while saying the actual total could be somewhere between 426,369 and 793,663. Such wartime … Continue reading “The Pundit Path for Death in Iraq”

NEW DELHI – How is North Korea’s atomic explosion, signifying the latest breakout from the global nuclear restraint regime, likely to affect the preceding two breakout cases, India and Pakistan? Eight years after the two South Asian states blasted their way into the world’s "nuclear club," it seems probable that their full integration and "normalization" … Continue reading “N. Korean Blast May Hit Indo-US Nuclear Deal”

The case for impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is far stronger than the case against President Bill Clinton or the impending case that drove President Nixon to resign. With Republican control of Congress, especially of the House where impeachment must originate, it is hardly surprising that impeachment of the Republican … Continue reading “Why Bush Should (but Won’t) Be Impeached”

Updated 11:00 p.m. EDT, Oct. 13, 2006 At least 115 people have died and 39 others were wounded during continuing violence in Iraq. Among the dead are two British contractors, the head of a special operations unit, and a religious leader. Among the injured are 12 American soldiers who were fighting in Mosul. Another soldier … Continue reading “Friday Attacks Leave 112 Iraqis, 1 GI, 2 British Contractors Dead”

The new study estimating that 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion was – naturally – dismissed out of hand in Washington and London and disdained by the War Party‘s pet pundits. My favorite comment came from the president, who announced: "The methodology is pretty well discredited." Yes, our genius of … Continue reading “Iraq: The Hidden Horror”

The publics of India and China believe that each of their respective nations currently exercise global influence second only to the United States, whose relative power, although still unmatched, is on the wane, according to a major opinion survey [.pdf] released Thursday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) and the Asia Society. The … Continue reading “Poll: US Power Waning, Asian Power Growing”