Month: December 2006

If a would-be novelist – desperate for money and some kind of recognition – put the events surrounding the death of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko into a fictional narrative, one can only imagine the kind of reviews it would generate. An improbable plot – caricatures instead of characters – and, in the end, just plain … Continue reading “Alexander Litvinenko: Blackmailer, Smuggler, Gangster Extraordinaire”

Updated at 1:00 p.m. EST, Dec. 4, 2006 On Sunday, U.S. military sources reported on the deaths of nine U.S. servicemembers in separate incidents across Iraq over the weekend; two soldiers were also wounded. Monday morning, authorities added four dead servicemembers to that list as a result of a helicopter crash in Anbar on Sunday. … Continue reading “Sunday: 13 GIs, 108 Iraqis Killed; Pilot Listed As KIA”

Updated at 1:35 a.m. EST, Dec. 4, 2006 The U.S military reported the first American servicemember death for December, and at least 187 Iraqis were also killed, another 83 were wounded, in various events. The most notable incident was a triple bombing of a Shi’te commercial neighborhood in central Baghdad, which killed almost 100 people. … Continue reading “Saturday: 187 Iraqis, 1 GI Killed; 83 Iraqis Wounded”

The meeting in Jordan between President Bush and Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki – unless the private discussions were a whole lot more frank and productive than it is reasonable to believe they probably were, based on public statements and background briefings – may stand one day as a symbol of the eternal fecklessness of … Continue reading “Sense and Stubbornness”

According to Seymour Hersh, in early 2004, John Bolton, who was then the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, privately conveyed to International Atomic Energy Agency officials his suspicions that Iran was conducting research – at Parchin, the center of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization – into “the intricately timed detonation of conventional explosives” needed for … Continue reading “Polonium-210, Fiction and Fact”

Tens of millions of Americans want President George W. Bush to be impeached for the lies and deceit he used to launch an illegal war and for violating his oath of office to uphold the US Constitution. Millions of other Americans want Bush turned over to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. The true … Continue reading “Is President Bush Sane?”

Updated at 10:59 p.m. EST, Dec. 1, 2006 As Italian troops left Iraq for good today, 68 Iraqis were killed and another 164 wounded in violent events across the country. U.S. authorities announced the death of a soldier on Thursday, and a prominent Iraqi soccer official was abducted. In Coalition news, the U.S. military reported … Continue reading “Friday: 68 Iraqis, 1 GI Killed; 164 Iraqis Wounded”

This is the first “indictment” of the president, the vice president, and their colleagues for defrauding us into war in Iraq. I put that “indict” in quotes because what follows, as former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega makes clear in her new book United States v. George W. Bush et al., is “not an … Continue reading “Indicting Bush”

The latest serpent at which a drowning Washington Establishment is grasping is the idea of sending more American troops to Iraq. Would more troops turn the war there in our favor? No. Why not? First, because nothing can. The war in Iraq is irredeemably lost. Neither we nor, at present, anyone else can create a … Continue reading “More Troops?”

I fear my readers must think I’ve forgotten about Iraq, since I haven’t written about it in well over a week. Of course it could hardly have slipped my mind – I am, after all, editorial director of a web site known as Antiwar.com. However, I must confess not only to weariness concerning the subject, … Continue reading “America Held Hostage”