Speaking to journalists last week, Navy Capt. Theodore Fessel Jr., the chief representative at Guantánamo for the Pentagon's Office of Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants (OARDEC), which oversees the tribunals and review boards convened to assess...
Wednesday: 1 GI, 37 Iraqis Killed, 28 Wounded
Updated at 11:55 p.m. EDT, Oct. 17, 2007On a relatively quiet Wednesday, at least 37 Iraqis were killed and 28 more were wounded while tensions on the Turkish border continue. An American soldier died of a non-combat-related illness in Germany after being flown out of...
Not -So-New Homeland Security Strategy
Last week, the White House issued a new National Strategy for Homeland Security. This new Strategy is supposed to reflect "our increased understanding of the terrorist threats confronting the United States today." Indeed, one of the key components of...
The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal
The Blackwater scandal has gotten plenty of media coverage, and it deserves a lot more. Taxpayer subsidies for private mercenaries are antithetical to democracy, and Blackwater's actions in Iraq have often been murderous. But the scandal is unfolding in a U.S. media...
With the Lost Boys in
Southern Sudan
"Starting from Zero" To the extent that the media spotlight is ever directed at Africa, it has focused on Darfur, in western Sudan, where several hundred thousand people have died in ethnic violence since 2003. Just next door, beyond the glare of the spotlight,...
The Mother of All Pretexts
When I hear mention of the "Clash of Civilizations," I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. To laugh, because it is such a silly notion. To cry, because it is liable to cause untold disasters. To cry even more, because our leaders are exploiting this...
The Israeli Right Has a Peace Plan
While the world holds its breath in anticipation of the Mideast Summit in Annapolis which, no doubt, will constitute a historic landmark, giving a most significant boost to the economy of that small town in Maryland the Israeli right wing comes up with a...
From Bengal to Baghdad: Three Centuries of Corporate Warriors
Picture the scene: The head of a private military company is appearing before the legislature. For years, his firm has prospered from the occupation of a resource-rich Asian country, protected by its shareholders' powerful political connections. Only now are years of...
NSA Spying: What Did Pelosi Know?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has admitted knowing for several years about the Bush administration's eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant. She said she was briefed on it when she was ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. But was she told...
Lebanon: What a ‘Safe’ Cluster Bomb Did
TYRE - The explosion ripped through the tiny garden in rural south Lebanon, hurling Naemah Ghazi to the ground. The shrapnel from the bomb sliced through her legs, and she rapidly lost consciousness. "There was a lot of blood," her mother Khadija recalls. "All her...


