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“In this time of testing, our troops can know: The American people are behind you. Next week, our nation has an opportunity to make sure that support is felt by every soldier, sailor, airman, Coast Guardsman, and Marine at every outpost across the world. This Fourth of July, I ask you to find a way … Continue reading “They Died for Their Country”

In an excellent piece in the UK’s premier conservative magazine, the Spectator, Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair columnist who covered the invasion from Centcom headquarters, sums up the present moment in Iraq quite well: “All in all, after more than two years of combat and any number of cycles of triumphalism followed by dismal comeuppance, … Continue reading “How to End the War: Negotiations Now!”

I see President Bush’s speech Tuesday as a bit of evidence that the empire, at the very moment it seems to hold sway over all and sundry as the “sole superpower,” is in serious decline. That the putatively most powerful man in the world should have so little insight not only into what to do … Continue reading “Signs of Decline”

“[B]y false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. … But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we … Continue reading “Maniacs on Pedestals”

BRUSSELS – Government blacklists that proscribe groups and individuals as terrorists are arbitrary, secretive, and unjust, according to a new report by a network of civil rights groups. Statewatch, which monitors the civil liberties in the European Union (EU), the Campaign Against Criminalizing Communities, and the Human Rights and Social Justice Institute at the London … Continue reading “Groups Say Terror Lists Are ‘Arbitrary’”

The editors of the New York Times this morning feign shock that in his speech at Fort Bragg yesterday evening President George W. Bush would "raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks." Kudos for that … Continue reading “Stay the Crooked Course”

The U.S. Air Force continued to carry out damage control Tuesday before a congressional committee looking into religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., which trains future officers. A military task force reported last week that there was no overt religious discrimination at the academy but that it found insensitivity by … Continue reading “Jesus Is Not Our Co-Pilot, Academy Insists”

Oh, to be a gonzocon in denial! Has National Review online (NRO) become the National Backward Glance? Are all the rah-rah warmongers and Star Trek fans on "The Corner" beginning to feel the breath of history down the backs of their necks? Or, to paraphrase Tolkien, is Smeagol losing his nerve? Why, ragin’ Rich Lowry … Continue reading “Gonzocons Erase History”

As a congressional committee heard testimony last week that billions of Iraqi dollars – held in trust by the U.S. government – still cannot be accounted for, the inspector general charged with tracking the funds said he has referred three contractors to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecutions for fraud. Stuart W. Bowen Jr., … Continue reading “Report: ‘Appalling Fraud and Greed’ in Iraq Contracts”

Despite a strong delivery, solemn demeanor, and a respectful military audience, U.S. President George W. Bush’s effort to rally the nation behind his Iraq strategy through a prime-time televised speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., offered nothing new to reassure a restive public that the situation was coming under control. Rejecting increasingly bold calls by Democrats … Continue reading “Bush’s Iraq Speech Falls Flat”