Month: January 2007

Just this week, the Bush administration is considering making a little futuristic news. The president might soon approve “a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades,” the Reliable Replacement Warhead. If only names were reality… Critics are already claiming that the new “hybrid” design of … Continue reading “Raptors, Robots, and Rods from God”

The series of blunders and willful miscalculations that led to our present predicament in Iraq are now being replicated in Somalia, where a rather large U.S. footprint is being stamped into the hard Somali soil. Well, it isn’t a footprint, quite yet, but rather a series of bomb craters, where the lives of “many” civilians, … Continue reading “They Never Learn”

Is the surge an orchestrated distraction from the real war plan? A good case can be made that it is. The US Congress and media are focused on President Bush’s proposal for an increase of 20,000 US troops in Iraq, while Israel and its American neoconservative allies prepare an assault on Iran. Commentators have expressed … Continue reading “Distracting Congress from the Real War Plan: Iran”

There is an absurd scene in Palestinian writer Suad Amiry’s recent book Sharon and My Mother-in-Law that is revealing about Israeli Jews’ attitude to the two other monotheistic religions. In 1992, long before Israel turned Amiry’s home city of Ramallah into a permanent ghetto behind checkpoints and walls, it was still possible for West Bank … Continue reading “Israel’s Purging of Palestinian Christians”

President Bush may be a headless horseman. But the biggest problem is what he rode in on. Martin Luther King Jr. had a good name for it 40 years ago. "The madness of militarism." We can blame Bush all we want – and he does hold the reins right now – but his main enablers … Continue reading “The Headless Horseman of the Apocalypse”

Updated at 12:30 a.m. EST, Jan. 10, 2007 In Iraq today, at least 120 people were killed or found dead and another 18 were injured during violent attacks. At least 34 more were killed during a plane crash. Also, one American soldier was shot dead in Diyala province. A Moldavian cargo plane carrying Turkish workers … Continue reading “Tuesday: 120 Iraqis, GI Killed; 34 Foreigners Killed in Plane Crash”

In a case that could have repercussions for free speech and press freedom in the United States, the U.S. military has subpoenaed two peace activists and a journalist in its case against Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to be court-martialed for refusing to serve in Iraq. "I’m alarmed," said Olympia-based activist Phan Nguyen, … Continue reading “More Subpoenas Come Down in Watada Case”

with Ali al-Fadhily FALLUJAH – Ten-year-old Yassir aimed a plastic gun at a passing US armored patrol in Fallujah, and shouted "Bang! Bang!" Yassir did not know what was coming. "I yelled for everyone to run, because the Americans were turning back," 12-year-old Ahmed who was with Yassir told IPS. The soldiers followed Yassir to … Continue reading “Terrified Soldiers Terrifying People”

President George W. Bush, contrary to the will of the American and Iraqi peoples and his own military commanders, seems ready to embark on a potentially disastrous escalation of the Iraq war, which was lost long ago. This mind-numbingly idiotic strategy is sure to needlessly cost more American and Iraqi lives and to lose the … Continue reading “Say Good-bye to a Future Republican Presidency”

As George Bush reflects on his legacy, an urgent question must be pressing in upon him each day. Will I leave here as the man who launched failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost thousands of U.S. dead, to no avail? Or can I yet enter history as the Churchillian statesman who used U.S. … Continue reading “Who Is Planning Our Next War?”