Following Orders Is No Excuse

"A hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council." That is how Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell's February 2003 Iraq WMD speech to the UN was described last Friday (Feb. 3) on PBS by one who ought to...

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Gravest Threat – Not

John Negroponte, our first director of national intelligence, gave his first threat assessment [.pdf] to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week. "Let me begin with a straightforward statement of preoccupation shared by all of us sitting here before you:...

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From the Founders
to the Felons

For the past several weeks now, we have had to deal, as a country, with the realization that the Pentagon, the White House, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, and who knows how many other federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been...

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Hamas and Democracy

I laughed when Hamas swept the Palestinian elections. After all, President Bush and his gang of neoconservative ideologues have been preaching that democracy in the Middle East will lead to peace. Oops. Now the president will once more have to expose himself as the...

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Hamas and Israel: Rival Twins

Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Huge surprise. Years of Israeli policy to crush secular Palestinian nationalism succeeded beyond expectation. Who could predict that in the Middle East, where causes invariably produce unintended effects (oh, those irrational...

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Afghan Farmers Feel Pinch of Poppy Eradication

For the last two years he has grown no poppy, and his family have begun to feel the pinch. This year, this farmer from Nangahar province in Afghanistan plans to resume poppy cultivation. And not just he but thousands of others, and not just in Nangahar province but...

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Prepare for Perpetual War

The Bizarro World illogic started right off the bat when George W. Bush intoned that what we need more of in public life is "a civil tone." This from a man who has repeatedly impugned the patriotism of his opponents, and just the previous week declared that critics of...

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