Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that interim Afghan prime minister Hamid Karzai was the darling of Washington? There he was during President Bush's State of the Union address, making a fashion statement that was lovingly analyzed by various fawning commentators –...
Some might argue that I should be grateful at having my prejudices confirmed. But there's plenty of evidence on the historical record. I could have lived a long time – a lifetime, perhaps? – without a contemporary, up-to-the-minute demonstration of the old...
It is hardly unusual for all sides of a given controversy to miss the central point; it's what most of us do most of the time. But the skirting of salient issues surrounding the prisoners being held at the American Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba seems more egregious than...
I distinctly remember President Bush, when the war – or the bombing campaign, depending on how much of a stickler you are for constitutionally-declared wars and other anachronisms – was just beginning, promising quite specifically that the United States...
The French judge who has worked for seven apparently frustrating years trying to prove a persistent and sizable pattern of corruption by French President Jacques Chirac has resigned in frustration and given a blistering interview to the newspaper Le Parisien. Judge...
What passes in most media accounts as the "international community," that floating collection of international diplomats who seem to have a stronger sense of loyalty to the international system, the ideal of diplomacy and agreements as ends in themselves – not to...
Last weekend President Bush said, in response to questions about when the war in Afghanistan might be over, that he would stay in touch with Tommy Franks and other military commanders and declare victory the moment the military experts said the task was done –...
Back in the bad old days academics and spooks called "Kremlinologists" worked assiduously to try to decipher the meanings and intentions of cryptic statements and portents from the central governing institutions of the secretive and security-minded masters...
Now that the Taliban seem to have been defeated, now that Al Qaeda seems to be on the run – although as of this writing Osama (Usama?) bin Laden still seems to be alive and at large – a few people are talking about the shape of a future government in...
The most interesting theory in the wake of the weekend attacks in Israel came from DEBKA-Net-Weekly, advertised as an intelligence service and carried on WorldNetDaily.com. In its report Monday, it said that the unspoken upshot of the hurried and quite private meeting...
