The Bush Legacy:
Headed for Hisses?

Let us imagine for a moment that the years of George W. Bush as president have already passed us by, that it is perhaps 2017. In this imaginary time, what might the former president's Wikipedia entry look like? Here is a guess: "George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946)...

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Another Victim of the Anti-Neocon Revolution?

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz was scheduled to spend this week welcoming economic officials from all around the world to the bank's spring meetings in Washington. Instead, he has been engaged in an intense campaign aimed at fending off the growing pressure on...

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Is Washington Being Sidelined on the Middle East?

Once upon a time, an American president would have been a leader in the effort to bring peace between Israel and its neighbors, since, after all, such reconciliation would bring stability to the Middle East and serve long-term U.S. geopolitical interests. In that...

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The Axis of Evil: And Then There Was One

During his State of the Union Address on Jan. 29, 2002, President George W. Bush named Iraq, North Korea, and Iran as members of an "Axis of Evil," and accused them of sponsoring terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The three Evils Ones...

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Listen to the Foxes, Not Hedgehogs, on Iraq

I have read the report on and parts of the (declassified) text of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's future, the official assessment issued by key American intelligence agencies. It outlines three possible scenarios for the U.S.-occupied country: The...

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Expanding the War to Iran: Another ‘Urban Legend’?

Rejecting the notion that the United States was planning to attack Iran and Syria, White House Spokesman Tony Snow called it a myth or an "urban legend." "I want to address [a] kind of a rumor, an urban legend that's going around," Snow told reporters at a White House...

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A Military ‘Surge’ to a
Political Nowhere

It was the renowned Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz who proposed in the early 19th century that "war is merely a continuation of politics" – an assertion that should continue to serve as a cautionary note to statesmen and generals who fail to take...

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Brace Yourself for 2007

There was a certain end-of-an-era feeling in Washington in the last few weeks of 2006. In the aftermath of the Republican loss of Congress in November, interpreted by most pundits as the American public's repudiation of President George Bush's policy in Iraq, the...

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The Right Men, the Wrong President

For most of the second part of the 20th Century, representatives of foreign governments had grown accustomed to dealing with a certain type of US official. Ask a Russian diplomat, a Japanese bureaucrat or a French intelligence officer, and they will probably describe...

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