Recently, speaking of his war in Iraq, George Bush put the Vietnam analogy back in the public eye. He was asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was on the mark in suggesting that what “we might be seeing now is the Iraqi equivalent of the Tet Offensive.” The president’s … Continue reading “The Bush Administration’s
War of the Images”
Tom Engelhardt
An editor in publishing for the last 25 years, Tom Engelhardt is the author
of The
End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold
War era, now out in a revised edition with a new preface and afterword, and Mission Unaccomplished, TomDispatch Interviews With American Iconoclasts and Dissenters.
He is at present consulting editor for Metropolitan Books, a fellow of the
Nation Institute, and a teaching fellow at the journalism school of the University of California, Berkeley.
Visit his Web site.
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The Bush Administration’s
The End of Maliki?
In some ways, amid the internecine bloodletting, torture, spiking American casualties, death-dealing confusion, and general mayhem, here’s all you need to know about the Iraqi “government” of Nouri al-Maliki. When the prime minister wanted to check on whether he was going to hang onto his position, he didn’t go to parliament or to the Iraqi … Continue reading “The End of Maliki?”
Snatching Defeat
From Victory’s Jaws
Presidential approval polling figures, so ripe and upward moving in September, are as off-a-cliff-steeply in the first half of October. The likes of the polling gap between Americans likely to cast a generic Democratic and a generic Republican vote in the upcoming midterm elections hasn’t been seen since 1994 – and then in reverse, of … Continue reading “Snatching Defeat
From Victory’s Jaws”
From Victory’s Jaws”
Nine Paradoxes of a Lost War
Here’s how the president described the enemy in Iraq at his press conference last week. “The violence is being caused by a combination of terrorists, elements of former regime criminals, and sectarian militias.” “Elements of former regime criminals,” AKA “bitter-enders,” AKA “Saddamists.” The “sectarian militias” may have been a relatively recent add-on, but this is … Continue reading “Nine Paradoxes of a Lost War”
Debunking the Armitage Story
In the first of her two-part series on the Libby case, former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega suggested that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their supporters might already be preparing the groundwork for a Libby presidential pardon, perhaps even before the case begins in mid-January. After all, who wants all that ugly 2002-2003 linen … Continue reading “Debunking the Armitage Story”
George Bush’s
War of the Words
[Note for readers: The first TomDispatch book to be published this season has just arrived in the stores. (The second will be not an October, but a late November, surprise.) Mission Unaccomplished, TomDispatch Interviews With American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books, $14.95) collects the interviews I’ve done at the site – from Howard Zinn, Juan … Continue reading “George Bush’s
War of the Words”
War of the Words”
A Libby Pardon for Christmas?
Sometimes, the proximate cause of an unraveling, even an implosion, may catch everyone by surprise. This week the “tipping point” (to borrow a Bush administration phrase from the Iraq War) for the possible unraveling of Republican control of Congress may be the roiling, boiling Mark Foley affair with its sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages … Continue reading “A Libby Pardon for Christmas?”
The Pentagon Befriends MySpace.com
Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who co-chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children and billed himself as an enemy of pedophiles and online predators everywhere, just resigned over e-mails and instant messages sent to underage male congressional pages who “said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to … Continue reading “The Pentagon Befriends MySpace.com”
Iraq at the Gates of Hell
Recently, in one of many speeches melding his Global War on Terror and his war in Iraq, George W. Bush said, “Victory in Iraq will be difficult and it will require more sacrifice. The fighting there can be as fierce as it was at Omaha Beach or Guadalcanal. And victory is as important as it … Continue reading “Iraq at the Gates of Hell”
The Facts on the Ground
This August, a site of shame, shared by Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush, was emptied. Abu Ghraib prison is the place where Saddam’s functionaries tortured (and sometimes killed) many enemies of his regime, and where Bush’s functionaries, as a series of notorious digital photos revealed, committed what the U.S. press still likes to refer … Continue reading “The Facts on the Ground”