But Who Was Right – Rudy or Ron?

It was the decisive moment of the South Carolina debate. Hearing Rep. Ron Paul recite the reasons for Arab and Islamic resentment of the United States, including 10 years of bombing and sanctions that brought death to thousands of Iraqis after the Gulf War, Rudy...

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Surge Strategy Shows Weaknesses

More than three months into the implementation of U.S. President George W. Bush's "surge" strategy, skepticism over the likelihood of its success is still running high here. Except among neoconservatives, who have been the strategy's most enthusiastic...

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Bill Shields Pentagon Aid Boost from Oversight

Newly proposed legislation would expand existing Pentagon security and military aid programs in Iraq and Afghanistan to "coalition partners" in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Building Global Partnerships Act of 2007 would authorize the secretary of...

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George Tenet Lies About
His Lies

The neoconservatives around Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and their media allies bear the principal blame for bringing about the invasion of Iraq. As they cannot temperamentally consider themselves in any way culpable and...

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Backtalk, May 15, 2007

Back in the EUSSR The standards used by the Empire to justify independence for Kosovo from Serbia should then be applied also to Nagorno Karabakh. The Republic of Nagorno Karabakh should be recognized by the UN as a sovereign country independent from Azerbaijan. But...

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Ending the Empire

Way back in 1999, when I was still a TomDispatch-less book editor, I read a proposal from Chalmers Johnson. He was, then, known mainly as a scholar of modern Japan, though years earlier I had read his brilliant book on Chinese peasant nationalism – about a period...

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The Wacky World
of Norman Podhoretz

People tend to stay fixated on the best time of their lives, and in the case of the neocons, that was undoubtedly the Cold War era. It is therefore no surprise that, with the coming of the "war on terrorism," they have likened the enemy, as Norman Podhoretz...

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Who’s a Patriot,
Who’s an Oppressor?

If 500 years from now American soldiers are still on patrol in Iraq, they won't be called Iraq's "liberators." After five centuries of armed occupation, it would be hard to describe them as anything other than an oppressive imperial force. And Iraqis who attack U.S....

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