You know there's trouble ahead when Iraq, in its present state, is the good news story for Bush administration policy. While various civilian and military officials from the president on down have been talking up "success" in Iraq and beating the rhetorical war drums...
Advice to a Young Builder in Tough Times I know. Times are tough. Here, in the United States, the bottom's threatening to blow out of the housing market. Here, construction companies are laying off employees, and builders are wondering where their next jobs are likely...
History… phooey! Or, more mildly, Americans traditionally aren't much interested in it and the media largely don't have time for it either. For one thing, the past is often just so inconvenient. On Monday, for instance, there was a front-page piece in the New...
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Evidently, Blackwater, the now infamous private security company whose hired guns, working for the State Department, mowed down at least 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad square recently, wants to soften its image. (I wonder why?) The New York Times' Paul von Zielbauer just...
Before the invasion of Iraq, while millions demonstrated in the streets, often waving homemade placards with "No Blood for Oil" – or equivalents like "Don't Trade Lives for Oil" and like "How Did USA's Oil Get Under Iraq's Sand?" – the Bush administration...
They came in as unreformed Cold Warriors, only lacking a cold war – and looking for an enemy: a Russia to roll back even further, rogue states like Saddam's rickety dictatorship to smash. They were still in the old fight, eager to make sure that the "Evil...
They can't help themselves. They want to confess. How else to explain the torture memorandums that continue to flow out of the inner sancta of this administration, the most recent of which were evidently leaked to the New York Times. Those two, from the Alberto...
"I made my arguments and went down in flames. History will prove me right." Yes, that was George W. Bush. No, he wasn't talking about Iraq. The date was September 1993 and Bush, then managing general partner of the Texas Rangers, had voted against "realignment and a...
"Starting from Zero" To the extent that the media spotlight is ever directed at Africa, it has focused on Darfur, in western Sudan, where several hundred thousand people have died in ethnic violence since 2003. Just next door, beyond the glare of the spotlight,...
