There is a lot of talk in Washington these days about "containment." Foreign policy pundits insist that the U.S. must contain Iran, whose rise as a political-military power poses a threat to Western strategic and economic interests in the Persian Gulf...
US Vets Testify to Torture of Detainees
SILVER SPRING, Maryland "I would like to share with you how one goes about becoming a concentration camp guard without having made many decisions," 24-year-old former Guantanamo prison guard Christopher Arent told a crowd of hundreds at last weekend's...
Iraq: Five Years After the Conquest
On Sunday, I spoke at an event organized by a coalition of peace groups marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Being the reclusive writer type, I don't really get much of a kick out of speaking in front of an audience. However, in this case, aside from...
For the Iraq War’s Birthday, Slice the Cake
As the fifth anniversary of the United States' second longest (next to Vietnam) and second costliest (next to World War II) war passes, the good news is that the counterinsurgency strategy of Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno seems to be working. The...
Khomeini’s Granddaughter Slams Ahmadinejad
If your grandfather was the founder of the first Islamic Republic of Iran, you would probably expect to have a very comfortable life in the land of ayatollahs, where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is president and Khomeini's successor has absolute power. But you would be wrong....
Tuesday: 38 Iraqis Killed, 77 Wounded
Updated at 11:55 p.m. EDT, Mar. 18, 2008At least 38 Iraqis were killed and another 77 were wounded during continued bombings throughout the country. Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration reported finding that about 2.7 million Iraqis were displaced...
Smearing Obama
The smear machine is taking out after Barack Obama, and with a vengeance. Not that this is surprising, or even anything new: they've been conducting a low-level hate campaign ever since he attained front-runner status, and now they're going into overdrive with a...
Philip K. Dick, Meet
George W. Bush
Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a small town somewhere near the Southern California coast. You're going about your daily life, trying to scrape by in hard times, when the missile hits. It might have come from the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ...
The West vs. Iran:
A Simple Story of Good vs. Evil?
It does not take much expertise to understand that the current tightness of the oil market is in large part due to the situation in Iran and Iraq. As is well-known, Iran and Iraq have the highest proven oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia. Iran also has the...
Iraq Vet: Rules of Engagement ‘Thrown Out the Window’
Garret Reppenhagen received integral training about the Geneva Conventions and the rules of engagement during his deployment in Kosovo. But in Iraq, "much of this was thrown out the window," he says. "The men I served with are professionals,"...


