Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

When U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates accused Iran of "subversive activity" in Latin America Tuesday, it raised the question whether he is trying to discourage President Barack Obama from abandoning the hard-line policy of coercive diplomacy toward Iran...

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Wednesday: 7 Iraqis Killed, 10 Wounded

Updated at 8:15 p.m. EST, Jan. 28, 2009U.S. President Obama is meeting with defense officials at the White House today to discuss drawdown plans just as early polling begins in Iraq. Meanwhile, at least seven Iraqis were killed and another 10 were wounded in light...

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Muslim World Hails End of a Despised Symbol

While the decision of President Barack Obama to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay Cuba and end the practice of interrogation techniques that violate international law made front-page news throughout the United States, press reaction in the Middle East was far less...

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Tuesday: 3 Iraqis Killed, 10 Wounded

Updated at 8:10 p.m. EST, Jan. 27, 2009At least three Iraqis were killed and 10 more were wounded in the latest violence. A couple of the attacks appeared to be election-related, but an expected uptick in such attacks has not yet been seen. No Coalition deaths were...

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Put Torture on Trial

President Barack Obama is to be commended for his planned closure of Guantanamo and covert CIA prisons as well as his instructions that no United States agency will exceed the U.S. military's guidelines on interrogation, but he does not go far enough. Transparency and...

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Backtalk, January 27, 2009

Prosecute George W. Bush for Illegal Acts Mr. Eland, You have omitted, whether intentionally or not, one of the most significant impediments, from Obama's point of view, to a full-scale investigation of Bushco war crimes and, in the Valerie Plame case, outright...

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Meet the New Boss;
Same as the Old Boss

"And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity,...

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Five Questions for George Mitchell

In the latest issue of the Nation magazine, Jonathan Schell has written a piece, "Obama and the Return of the Real," that should stand as a manifesto for sanity in our times. In it, he considers just how self-inflicted our present catastrophic situation, from economic...

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A Bibi-Barack Collision?

"Where there is no solution, there is no problem," geostrategist James Burnham once wryly observed. Ex-Sen. George Mitchell, the latest U.S. negotiator to take up the Palestine portfolio, may discover what it was that Burnham meant. For Israel's three-week war on...

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