Ehud Olmert who assumed the office of prime minister of Israel earlier this month has already met with President Bush at the White House and addressed a joint session of Congress. Now, you may remember that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, newly elected president of...
Making Hay(den) While
They Shun Signs
Bertie Wooster: Were you frightfully bright as a kid, Jeeves? Jeeves: My mother thought me intelligent, sir. Bertie Wooster: You can't go by that. My mother thought me intelligent! - from a Wodehouse novel, a rough recollection If I am one of the 200 million whose...
Searching for the Next Enemy
Peace is boring. How else to explain America's seemingly incessant search for a new enemy? The Cold War might have been scary, but it provided an exciting challenge: contain the Evil Empire. Create an international coalition to defend the "free world." Exciting, but...
Drifting Down the
Path to Perdition
[This interview is the second of two installments. To read the first, click here.] TomDispatch: I'd like to turn to the issue of oil wars, energy wars. That seems to be what holds all this incoherent stuff together minds focused on a world of energy flows....
Enough Is Enough
Perhaps Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) didn't quite realize what she was getting into when she voted against the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, so-called, which would cut off all aid to the Palestinians, impose economic sanctions, and make it impossible for...
Public Hearings Sought in Phone Record Scandal
Anticipating that the U.S. federal government would invoke the so-called "state secrets" privilege to block any lawsuit calling for the disclosure of details about allegations that phone companies shared customer records with the government's biggest spy agency, a...
Steering Into a Third Intifada
When there is no solution, there is no problem, observed James Burnham, the former Trotskyite turned Cold War geostrategist. Burnham's insight came again to mind as President Bush ended his meeting with Ehud Olmert by announcing that the Israeli prime minister had...
Pressure Grows on Bush to Engage Iran Directly
The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is under increasing pressure both here and abroad to engage Iran in direct talks despite the continued opposition of pro-Israel neoconservatives and Vice President Dick Cheney. In recent weeks, a...
Eavesdropping, Gagging, and the Constitution
Is the National Security Agency being "turned against the people," as the Congressional committee led by Sen. Frank Church warned might happen? We the people cannot know; it's classified. Thursday's slick but evasive testimony by Gen. Mike Hayden, the president's...
Why Can’t the US Apply Its New North Korea Policy to Iran?
The conventional historical narrative of U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy has traced the ascendancy of the neoconservative ideologues in his administration to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the ensuing war in Iraq. The common...


