Month: January 2007

BAGHDAD – Violence is spreading further across Iraq, as Shi’ite Arab tribes in the south begin to engage occupation forces in new armed resistance. Resistance in the southern parts of Iraq has been escalating over the last three months, leading to increased casualties among British and other occupation forces. In the last seven months, at … Continue reading “Southern Iraqi Tribes Joining Armed Resistance”

Have you noticed? Neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney have cited any US intelligence assessments to support their fateful decision to send 21,500 more troops to referee the civil war in Iraq. This is a far cry from October 2002, when a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through in … Continue reading “Show Me The Intelligence”

President Bush is invoking his “commander in chief” authority to escalate the war in Iraq, and he will likely also invoke it to launch an aerial attack against Iran. Congress has long ago abdicated and delegated to the president its constitutional responsibility to initiate wars. Yet Congress still has one surefire way to influence events: … Continue reading “Congress Can Stop the Iran Attack, or Be Complicit in War Crimes”

When I published my book Blood and Religion last year, I sought not only to explain what lay behind Israeli policies since the failed Camp David negotiations nearly seven years ago, including the disengagement from Gaza and the building of a wall across the West Bank, but I also offered a few suggestions about where … Continue reading “Israel’s Dark Future”

Updated at 5:00 p.m. EST, Jan. 19, 2007 U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made an unannounced trip to southern Iraq today to meet with Coalition leaders. Ahead of the visit one GI was killed and three were wounded in the capital; six British soldiers in Basra were hurt in a separate incident. Also, 37 Iraqis … Continue reading “Friday: 37 Iraqis, GI Killed; 22 Iraqis, 3 GIs, 6 Britons Wounded”

The convoy of flatbed trucks picked up its cargo at Baghdad International Airport last spring and sped northwest, stacked high with crates of expensive medical equipment. From bilirubin meters and hematology analyzers to infant incubators and dental appliances, the equipment had been ordered to help Iraq shore up a disintegrating health care system. But instead … Continue reading “What They Asked For, They Did Not Get”

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) may have effectively closed up shop two years ago and its key neoconservative allies in the administration, such as Scooter Libby and Douglas Feith, may be long gone, but the group’s five-year-old Middle East strategy remains very much alive. This is not the "Wilsonian" strategy of transforming … Continue reading “Democracy Languishes, but Neocon Strategy Lives”

A senior US defense department official who suggested that major corporations should stop doing business with large law firms who represent Guantánamo Bay detainees has apologized for his remarks – but his apology failed to satisfy some legal and human rights advocates. The remarks were made on a Washington, DC radio program Tuesday by Charles … Continue reading “A Mea Culpa, But No Habeas Corpus”

No sooner had Sens. Hagel and Biden announced their resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that the Bush surge of 21,500 troops to Iraq was not in the national interest than the stampede was on. By day’s end, Sens. Dodd, Clinton, Bayh, Levin and Obama and ex-Sen. John Edwards had all made or issued … Continue reading “See the Superpower Run”

The times, they sure are a-changin‘! Why, I remember when you could count congressional opponents of the war on the fingers of one hand. Back then, it was just the likes of Ron Paul and Neil Abercrombie who were introducing resolutions trying to get us out of the Iraqi quagmire, but today there are no … Continue reading “Stop the Next War”