I went to see the new Warner Bros. political thriller Syriana over the weekend (going to the movies is a rare treat when you're the parent of a young child). For most people, movies are entertainment and escapism (for that, I took my 6-year-old daughter to Chicken...
Turning the Corner in Iraq Yet Again
For several months actually, since the U.S. invasion of Iraq neoconservative propagandists have been trying to counter-spin the depressing reality in Mesopotamia that we've been watching on television by celebrating several "tipping points"...
Bush’s Wartime Dictatorship
In defending his edict authorizing surveillance of phone calls and e-mails originating in the United States, President Bush reiterated legal arguments, long made by his intellectual Praetorians, that imbue the White House with wartime powers no different from those...
Two False Options
In his address to the American people last Sunday evening, President George W. Bush said, "Yet now there are only two options before our country: victory or defeat." As usual, Mr. Bush is wrong. Victory is not an option, and it never was. The strategic objectives the...
Rigoberto Alpizar, RIP
Rigoberto Alpizar, a gentle Christian man with a loving family and a lot of friends, did not deserve to be shot to death by two federal goons in a jetway at Miami International Airport. What is the duty of air marshals? It is to prevent terrorists from taking over an...
Iraqis Glad 2005 Over, Have Dim Hopes for 2006
(With Arkan Hamed) BAGHDAD - Despite the parliamentary elections last week and temporary ease in violence, Iraqis remain bitter about the outgoing year, and skeptical of 2006. "As a doctor I usually travel daily from home to college," said Um Feras, a doctor of...
The Road to Serfdom
Balkans and the Demise of Principles As 2005 draws to a close, the ruined remnants of what used to be Yugoslavia are nowhere near the peace or prosperity both their demagogic leaders and imperial interventionists have promised. Saddled with the heritage of state...
The Blame Game Can Wait
Watch Ron Paul's speech on video. Our country faces major problems. No longer can they remain hidden from the American people. Most Americans are aware the federal budget is in dismal shape. Whether it's Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or even the private pension...
The Forgotten Anthrax Attacks of 2001
[Note: This is the second of two pieces focused on reevaluating the costs of the Sept. 11 attacks. In the first, "Shark-bit World," I took the New York Times back to the week before Sept. 11, 2001, time-machine style, and found a forgotten world in which the Bush...
Group Exposes CIA’s ‘Dark Prison’ in Afghanistan
Amid efforts by a bipartisan coalition in Congress to ban torture and inhumane treatment of detainees in the "war on terror," a major U.S. human rights groups charged Monday that Washington ran a secret prison in Afghanistan where suspected terrorists were...


