Month: December 2006

[Note for TomDispatch readers: Be on the lookout – former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, who took over TomDispatch last week, is tentatively scheduled to appear on The Colbert Report tonight. Don’t forget to be the first person in the neighborhood to “indict” the president by picking up a copy of de la Vega’s … Continue reading “How More Produces
Less in Iraq”

I‘m not a financial speculator, and I don’t play one on television. So please don’t base your decision on whether or not to bet against the U.S. dollar on my thoughts about the fate of the greenback, which has fallen to a 20-month low against the euro recently. But for someone like myself who is … Continue reading “A Losing War, a Failed President, a Weak Dollar: We’ve Been Here Before”

Serbia’s Delusions of "Partnership" On Nov. 29, NATO foreign ministers meeting in Riga extended an invitation to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to join its Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. Established in 1994, the program has been a way for former Warsaw Pact countries and others to attach themselves to the Alliance, and is widely considered … Continue reading “NATO’s Poisoned Chalice”

Updated at 7:25 p.m. EST, Dec. 7, 2006 At least 11 U.S. servicemembers died in three separate incidents in Iraq on Wednesday. A 12th soldier died on Thursday from wounds received on Wednesday. Meanwhile, at least 93 Iraqis were killed or found dead, 114 more were wounded, and 10 were kidnapped in several violent events. … Continue reading “Wednesday: 13 GIs Reported Killed; 94 Iraqis Killed; 114 Iraqis Wounded”

When I first put forward my thesis that we are suffering from what I call the Bizarro Effect – the inversion of moral laws as well as the rules of logic – it was just a hypothetical, a tentative assessment of the consequences of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I wasn’t absolutely sure that the sheer … Continue reading “Boris Berezovsky and the Bizarro Effect”

To have read the neoconservative press here over the past month, one would think that former Secretary of State James Baker poses the biggest threat to the United States and Israel since Saddam Hussein. As the ur-realist of U.S. Middle East policy who once had the temerity to threaten to withhold U.S. aid guarantees from … Continue reading “Neocons Move to Preempt Baker Report”

The final month of 2006 will be one to remember because of the first two – of perhaps many – U.S. Army servicemen will face charges that can carry the death penalty for crimes committed in Iraq. Yet 2007 may well be the year the U.S. military decides instead to spare their lives and sentence … Continue reading “US Unlikely to Sentence Soldiers to Death in Wartime”

With Ali al-Fadhily BAGHDAD – Once one of the best countries for women’s rights in the Middle East, Iraq has now become a place where women fear for their lives in an increasingly fundamentalist environment. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Iraqi women enjoyed rights under the Personal Status Law since July … Continue reading “In Iraq, It’s Hard
Being a Woman”

The lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has become notorious in the annals of American journalism. Even many reporters, editors, and commentators who fueled the drive to war in 2002 and early 2003 now acknowledge that major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war. But it’s happening again. The … Continue reading “It’s Happening Again”

Almost every war sees the emergence of a weapon that is considered decisive or revolutionary. The English longbow – with its ability to kill in great numbers at long range – gave England’s armies the edge in medieval wars on the continent for nearly three centuries, but advances in protective armor plating and the development … Continue reading “Two Pair of Twos”