Side Effects of Our War in Afghanistan

As we observe the slow and increasingly certain disintegration of Pakistan, we should force ourselves to confront an uncomfortable fact: events in Pakistan are to a large degree side effects of our war in Afghanistan. The Jan. 12 Washington Times headline was...

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Wounded Vets Trade One Hell for Another

Last year, the United States woke up to the reality of hundreds of thousands of soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan – and began to grapple with what to do about it. On Feb. 18, 2007, the headline "Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army's Top Medical...

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Enforcing Iran’s Dress Code May Cost Votes

TEHRAN - When the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad uncharacteristically denounced the country's police force for strictly enforcing the Islamic dress code (hijab), it was attributed to fears of losing popularity ahead of parliamentary elections in March. In...

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How the Pentagon Planted a False Story

Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the Jan. 6 U.S.-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran's military aggressiveness, a...

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War on Terror Moves East

The Pentagon's announcement Tuesday that it is dispatching some 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan underlines both Washington's mounting concern about the strength of the Taliban insurgency and the growing sense here that the central front in its nearly...

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Shocked, Shocked by Bush’s Broken Promises

On the American Film Institute's (AFI) list of the 100 best American movies, Casablanca has twice (in 1998 and 2007) been the runner-up to the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane (Casablanca was voted the number one love story by AFI in 2002). On AFI's list of top 100...

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In Mourning

My regular column won't appear today: I'm traveling back from my Mom's funeral. Elvera Raimondo was a real character: strong and independent long before the Women's Lib movement, holder of multiple jobs that enabled me to get out of the rotten public school system...

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US, Iran One Misstep
From the Edge

Just as the Annapolis Middle East Peace Conference morphed largely into an exercise in lining up a coalition against Iran, so too is President George W. Bush's first visit to Israel quickly becoming the latest round of Tehran-bashing. The trip, which was initially...

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The Hands of Esau

Which of the two men is the leader of the greatest power on earth and which is the boss of a small client state? A visitor from another planet, attending the press conference in Jerusalem, would find it hard not to answer: Olmert is the president of the great power,...

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