Portents of Failure

It has not been a good week for the dwindling band of true believers who still think just a little more effort using somewhat different tactics will yield something resembling a U.S.-Iraqi-quasi-government military victory, or even a tolerable stability, in Iraq....

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Conspiracy, Collusion, War

On March 7, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reported [.pdf] to the UN Security Council that "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival...

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Backtalk, April 13, 2007

Magnanimous Mahmoud With all due respect to Mr. Buchanan, the Middle East is not the South Atlantic. Defending your own people in a colony which is yours, the Falklands, is a far cry from operating in disputed waters where you are the country which invaded another...

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How a CIA Coup in Iran and My Life Became One

Like a giant piece in an intricate, if ugly, jigsaw puzzle, the aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, and its strike group are now sailing toward the Persian Gulf. On arrival, they will join the strike groups of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (which it is officially...

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Savage Peace: Wilson’s Failure

Ann Hagedorn, Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 543 pp., $27.00. The more awful the war, the more joyous the peace, or at least the moment the war ends. The peace itself often disappoints, like that after World War I,...

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McCain, the Militarist

John McCain was really caught off guard not only by the reaction to his recent walk in the Iraqi marketplace – ringed by a veritable wall of security, while US army helicopters hovered overhead – but also by subsequent events on the ground. "I just...

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Refugees Speak of Escape from Hell

DAMASCUS - Refugees from Iraq scattered around Damascus describe hellish conditions in the country they managed to leave behind. "I used to work with the Americans near Kut (in the south)," Sa'ad Hussein, a 34-year-old electrical engineer told IPS. "I...

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