The other day on Jerry Agar's radio show, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded to accusations about American atrocities at our prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He accused the detainees there of manipulating public opinion by lying about their treatment. He...
Look at the polls. When Gallup's pollsters go out to ask Americans about the Bush administration and Iraq, they frame their questions this way: "Do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?"; "Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war...
On a cloudless day, the sky a brilliant, late-afternoon blue, my car winds its way up the Berkeley hills. Plum and pear trees in glorious whites and pinks burst into sight at each turn in the road. Beds of yellow flowers, trees hung with lemons, and the odd palm are...
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse – the al-Askariya shrine, the Golden Mosque of Samarra, one of Shia Islam's most revered sites, was invaded by gunmen in police uniforms (possibly from Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia group, though no one has yet...
Over a week ago, Vice President Cheney managed to put a couple of hundred pellets of birdshot into his 78-year-old friend and Texas Republican Party builder, Harry Whittington. As the event turned into a national joke, edged with anger, and a late night spectacle, it...
Jonathan Schell, who lives in downtown New York City, began writing his "Letter from Ground Zero" column – still unnamed – almost before the white dust storm of 9/11 had settled. The first of what would become almost four-and-a-half years of such columns...
We're in a new period in the war in Iraq – one that brings to mind the Nixonian era of "Vietnamization": A president presiding over an increasingly unpopular war that won't end; an election bearing down; the need to placate a restive American public; and an army...
In the first installment of this series, I offered 42 names to begin what now seems an endless – and ever growing – list of top officials as well as beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their government posts in protest or...
Alfred McCoy, an expert on the CIA and its history of torture, has some actual news – the sort that's been sitting unnoticed right in front of our collective, reportorial eyes. Last year's clash between John McCain and the Bush administration over the senator's...
The president passed through his State of the Union address – ill-digested chunks of so many other speeches he's given ("We're writing a new chapter in the story of self-government – with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan, and millions of Iraqis marking...
