Initial press reports on information provided to the Senate by Robert Gates, President George W. Bush's nominee for the post of defense secretary, show Gates hewing very closely to the rhetoric of his predecessor. Gates is more parrot than innovator in his responses...
Despite a growing and virtually universal consensus both in America and abroad that the United States must engage Syria and Iran if it hopes to stabilize Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush appears determined to ignore Baghdad's two key neighbors as long as possible....
A coalition of U.S. peace groups is pressing ahead with plans for what it hopes will be a massive march on Washington Jan. 27, even though newly released documents show the antiwar community is under Pentagon surveillance. "The peace and justice movement helped make...
A revealing book I have recently read about the present Middle East is Joris Luyendijk's Almost Human. Luyendijk was a Dutch journalist who spent several years (1998-2003) in Arab countries as well as in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, working for two...
Rural communities are experiencing a disproportionate amount of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new study by the Carsey Institute, a think tank at the University of New Hampshire. "The mortality rate for soldiers from rural America is...
I find it almost impossible to write another post about our nauseatingly immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. I've made my views clear, and offered numerous reasons for my conclusions. See, for example, "No Way Out – But Out," "A Genuine Mission Impossible,"...
While ethnic cleansing plagues "liberated Iraq," Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the powerful Shi'ite Mahdi militia, has issued an ultimatum to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Sadr warned that if Maliki met President Bush in Jordan this week, the cleric and...
On Sunday, in a front-page New York Times piece ("U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself"), John Burns and Kirk Semple reported that a federal "interagency working group," looking into the finances of the various branches of the Sunni insurgency in...
The horrific murder of Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB officer and minor conspiracy theorist, has unleashed a wave of Russophobia that is sweeping over the Western media with Katrina-like force – washing away reason, logic, and the natural curiosity that makes for...
Updated at 6:40 p.m. EST, Nov. 29, 2006 Today, at least 83 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 61 were wounded in separate incidents across Iraq. Also, U.S. military sources reported on the death of an American soldier from "enemy action" in Anbar province....
