The Information Problem: Pull Out of Iraq

On February 5, I gave a luncheon talk on the Iraq war at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco. About 60 people attended. I spoke after fellow Antiwar.com columnist Ivan Eland. Ivan laid out a plan for partitioning Iraq or at least having a very weak central...

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Tortured Justifications

So it's out in the open now. Central Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Hayden admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that the CIA used the coercive interrogation technique known as waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, on three...

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More Bombing Creates New Enemies

BAGHDAD - Now that the smoke has cleared and the rubble settled, residents of a group of bombed Iraqi villages see the raid as really a US loss. Many Iraqis view the attack Jan. 10 by bombers and F-16 jets on a cluster of villages in the Latifiya district south of...

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Backtalk, February 9, 2009

Suharto, the Model Killer, and His Friends in High Places John Pilger's article is stunning in its description of the brutality of Suharto and the venality of western corporate interests. There is no nation of Indonesia, only a Javanese Empire (see George Szamuely's...

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The Cable-Cutter Mystery

I was skeptical, at first, of speculation over the cutting of two cables linking the Middle East with the Internet, which had it as part of some Vast Neocon Conspiracy to isolate the region prior to a US military assault. However, when two more cables – this...

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Election 2008: What’s a Peacenik to Do?

The appalling presidential election campaign drags on. On Super Tuesday Democrats split almost evenly between Hillary Clinton, a hawk turned slightly dovish, and Barack Obama, an Iraq war opponent who otherwise has found no foreign intervention he opposes. A...

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Annapolis Hopes Withered by Gaza Crisis

As President George W. Bush returned from his visit last month to Israel to reinvigorate the Annapolis process, the international media was dominated by reports of Palestinian militants firing rockets into Gaza, and Israel's response – an unprecedented blockade...

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