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With the seventh Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) ending in abysmal failure late last week at the United Nations, the worst fears about a tiny number of influential states holding the rest of the world hostage to their narrow interests have materialized. The conference, the second review since the NPT was indefinitely … Continue reading “World Cannot Afford Failure on the Nuclear Front”

Memo to: Andrew Card, White House chief of staff Re: Briefing your boss Just for the record, Andrew, as much as I have disagreed with the administration’s foreign policy these past four years, I have never accused the president of telling lies to the American people. I could fill a book with the untruths he … Continue reading “Bush: Still Hazy After All These Years”

The news that war is good for your mental health should confirm, once and for all, that we are truly living in Bizarro World – a universe of inverted values and the upside-down laws of a very unnatural nature. This explains why the U.S. government has engaged in a campaign of unprovoked assaults and unprecedented … Continue reading “Nancy Pelosi as ‘Winged Victory’”

On February 27, 1968, I sat in a small room on Capitol Hill. Around a long table, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was in session, taking testimony from an administration official. Most of all, I remember a man with a push-broom moustache and a voice like sandpaper, raspy and urgent. Wayne Morse did not resort … Continue reading “War Made Easy: From Vietnam to Iraq”

BEIRUT – The prominent anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir was killed in a car explosion in a Christian residential neighborhood of Beirut Thursday morning, in an attack that drew widespread condemnation. The bomb was placed under the driver’s seat of Kassir’s car parked outside his house, and was likely to have been detonated by remote control. … Continue reading “Murder of Lebanese Journalist Points to Rising Crisis”

The last few weeks have been base-heavy ones in the news. The Pentagon’s provisional Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list, the first in a decade, was published to domestic screams of pain. It represents, according to the Washington Post, “a sweeping plan to close or reduce forces at 62 major bases and nearly 800 minor … Continue reading “Bases, Bases Everywhere”

Gagged, but Still Going StrongI have been following Sibel Edmonds’ story avidly since the first time I saw a piece on it on Antiwar.com (the only place I’ve been able to learn about it by the way). There’s not been another story that raises my blood pressure as much as hers does. The blatant abuse … Continue reading “Backtalk, June2, 2005”

Winston Churchill once remarked that God protects drunks and the United States of America. Fortunately, the divine protection Churchill detected for the United States seems still in place – if we are wise enough to see and take advantage of it. In the past month, America has been blessed by two events that ought to … Continue reading “God, Drunks, and America”

The Forgotten Balkans Flashpoint When French voters rejected the EU Constitution this past weekend, among the loudest defenders of the EU were leaders of the Balkan countries that aspire to eventual annexation by the bloc, assuring their subjects that the road to untold riches and unimaginable prosperity still led through Brussels: "In every Balkan capital … Continue reading “Battle for Bosnia”

Among the many unhappy developments in American industry in recent decades has been the advent of "wreck it and run" management. A small coterie of senior managers takes over a company and makes a brilliant show of short-term profits while actually driving the business into the ground. They bail out just before it crashes, cashing … Continue reading “Wreck It and Run”