Saddam’s Death Leaves Unanswered Questions

SAN FRANCISCO, California (IPS) – Iraqi-Americans reacted with sadness to the execution of Saddam Hussein Saturday, calling the former Iraqi president's death by hanging early this morning Baghdad time a missed opportunity for justice. An Iraqi tribunal set up by...

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Nuclear Disarmament Gets Critical

NEW DELHI - If prospects for nuclear weapons reduction took a turn for the worse in 2006, the New Year holds out little hope for containing proliferation. In October 2006, eight years after India and Pakistan crossed the nuclear threshold, the world witnessed yet...

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Preserve, Protect and Defend

On hearing of the death of former President Gerald Ford, syndicated columnist Robert Novak – who infamously "outed" a CIA covert agent in what appears to have been a White House conspiracy, involving Vice President Dick Cheney, to discredit the CIA...

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Ends and Means in the New Year

I happened to hear an old country classic today that somehow got me thinking about the New Year: Charlie Daniels’ "The Devil went down to Georgia." Here are the lyrics: The devil went down to Georgia He was looking for a soul to steal And he was in a...

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Saturday: 110 Iraqis, 1 GI Killed; 167 Wounded

Updated at 6:05 p.m. EST, Dec. 30, 2006 Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn. He joins the 110 other Iraqis who were killed or found dead today; another 172 Iraqis were wounded in violent attacks throughout the country. Also, the death of another American soldier brought...

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Readings in the Age of Empire

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson Cambridge University Press, 2006 416 pp. Why are some countries democracies? Why are others dictatorships? The answers obviously are complex. History, culture, tradition, and accident...

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Backtalk, December 29, 2006

The Trap of Recognizing Israel Jonathan: Interesting and well put together. But I would like to suggest that it does not withstand analysis. It's fundamental flaw, as in so many arguments of the type, is in the premise: If you accept the premise that recognizing...

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Bush Iraq Policy Murky on the Real Enemy

This year saw the emergence of a sectarian civil war in Iraq and much more open Sunni-Shi'ite conflict in the Middle East. Sunni regimes in the region expressed acute anxiety both about the possibility of the Sunni-Shi'ite civil war in Iraq spreading to their own...

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More Troops but Less Control in Iraq

with Ali Al-FadhilyBAGHDAD - More US troops are expected to be deployed in Iraq in the New Year. Despite obvious rethinking, there is no decision on withdrawal of occupation forces. The presence of troops may be raised just for their own protection. According to a...

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