Conn Hallinan

In 1805, the French army out maneuvered, outsmarted, and outfought the combined armies of Russia and Austria at Austerlitz. Three years later it would flounder against a rag-tag collection of Spanish guerrillas. In 1967, it took six days for the Israeli army to smash Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and seize the West Bank, the Golan … Continue reading “The Algebra of Occupation”

The great 19th-century Tory Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli once remarked there were three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. It is a dictum the Bush administration has taken to heart when it comes to totaling up the carnage in Iraq: If you don’t like the numbers, just change them; and when in doubt, … Continue reading “The Casualties of Iraq”

According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan’s Pakitka Province and slammed into a madrassa, or Islamic school, this past June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were dead. The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114 Hellfire … Continue reading “Death at a Distance: The US Air War”

This is a tale about politics, influence, money and murder. It began more than 40 years ago with a bloodletting so massive that no one quite knows how many people died. Half a million? A million? Through four decades, the story of the relationship between the United States and the Indonesian military has left a … Continue reading “Enabling the Indonesian Military”

There are few areas in the world more entangled in historical deceit and betrayal than northern Iraq, where the British, the Ottomans, and the Americans have played a deadly game of political chess at the expense of the local Kurds. And now, because of a volatile brew of internal Iraqi and Turkish politics, coupled with … Continue reading “Kurdish Powder Keg
Primed to Explode”

The current brouhaha over a U.S. plan to deploy anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) in Poland has nothing to do with a fear that Iran will attack Europe or the U.S. with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). It has a great deal to do with the Bush administration’s efforts to neutralize Russia’s and China’s nuclear deterrents and … Continue reading “Nostalgic for the Cold War? Good News”

In 1609, a terrible thing happened: not terrible in the manner that great wars are terrible but in the way that opening Pandora’s Box was terrible. King James I of England discovered that dividing people on the basis of religion worked like a charm, thus sentencing the Irish to almost four centuries of blood and … Continue reading “Fanning Sectarian Fires
in the Middle East”

As the fables about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and clandestine ties with al-Qaeda began to unravel following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the flagship of U.S. news reporting, The New York Times, took itself to task for its failure to challenge its news sources. “Information that was controversial then, and seems questionable … Continue reading “The Najaf Massacre: Annotated”

Is Israel, supported by the Bush administration, preparing to launch an atomic war against Iran? On Jan. 7, the London Sunday Times claimed that the Israeli government is planning to attack Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. While the Israeli government denies the story, recent statements by top Israeli officials and military figures … Continue reading “Iran: Thinking the Unthinkable”

The Middle East has always been a place where illusion paves the road to disaster. In 1095, Pope Urban’s religious mania launched the Crusades, the reverberations of which still echo through the region. In 1915, Winston Churchill’s arrogance led to the World War I bloodbath at Gallipoli. In 2003, George Bush’s hubris ignited a spiral … Continue reading “The Persistence of
Mideast Illusions”