If we allow the Bush administration to drag this country into a war with Iran, we should all burn our voter-registration cards and go ahead and admit that we are no longer worthy of being citizens of a self-governing republic. For heaven's sake, the administration is...
Rice’s Conditional Offer to Iran May Be Problematic
Wednesday's unprecedented offer by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to join multilateral negotiations over its nuclear program was hailed as a positive step by Iran specialists who warned, however, that its conditional nature could prove problematic. Bowing to...
Iraqi Kurds Keep an Eye on Independence
ARBIL - Sipping tea at a café in Arbil, Moayed Rafiq, 25, watches news of a car bombing in Baghdad on an Arab television channel. Others around him also watch, quietly. "When I see this every day on TV, I think there is no need for us to tie our destiny with...
The Tangled Web
of American ‘Intelligence’
In recent months, among other uproars and scandals, Americans learned that the Defense Department has been collecting intelligence on and tracking domestic antiwar activists; that, since 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) has had a presidentially authorized,...
Countless My Lais in Iraq
The media feeding frenzy around what has been referred to as "Iraq's My Lai" has become frenetic. Focus on U.S. Marines slaughtering at least 20 civilians in Haditha last November is reminiscent of the media spasm around the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib during April and...
Missed Opportunities
(Partial List)
"The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity!" this phrase, coined by Abba Eban, has become a byword. It also illustrates a wise Talmudic saying: "He who finds fault in others (really) finds his own faults." No doubt, from the beginning of...
Hamas Faces a Presidential Revolution
JERUSALEM - Mahmoud Abbas does not fall into the category of outgoing, charismatic leaders with a penchant for bold political initiatives. Gray, circumspect, and technocratic are the adjectives often chosen to describe him. But the Palestinian president is now in the...
Badr Groups Move From Troubled Past to Uncertain Future
With Muhammad Zaher BAGHDAD - It could be instructive to recall that the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its armed wing, the Badr Corps, arose from a conference of Iraqi opposition parties called in Iran in 1982. The Supreme of the Islamic...
Leftists for Occupation
Even with mainstream reports that American troops are slaughtering Iraqi civilians, there are still plenty of lefties in the United States who cannot unify behind a call for an immediate and unconditional withdraw of occupation forces from Iraq. Fortunately, the...
Bad Month in Afghanistan May Delay US Drawdown
By just about any measure, May has been a bad month for U.S. policy in Afghanistan. It began with a warning by a shopkeeper in a small-town bazaar in the Pashtun southern part of the country to the visiting commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl...


