Category: Uncategorized

A major advocacy group charges that a Yemeni businessman captured in Egypt was handed over to U.S. authorities and "disappeared" for more than a year and a half before being sent to the Pentagon’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Human Rights Watch has released details of the previously unreported "reverse rendition" case of Abdul … Continue reading “‘Ghost Prisoner’ Resurfaces in Guantanamo”

A commission appointed by President Bush to analyze intelligence failures will be releasing its report today. According to The New York Times, the report “includes a searing critique of how the CIA and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein’s political maneuverings or the possibility that he no longer had weapon stockpiles.” But despite its … Continue reading “Iraq Intel Report: Expect Another Whitewash”

Civil libertarians and opposition political leaders are stepping up their efforts to pull back the "veil of secrecy" they claim has characterized the George W. Bush administration. In separate developments, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sought to obtain the records used by the government to deny U.S. entry to prominent foreign scholars, and four … Continue reading “Fresh Skirmishes in the Information Wars”

In the last three decades, there has been little doubt in my mind that democratic institutions would soon replace or subsume the world’s last remaining monarchies, including those in the Middle East. Monarchs could rule effectively when the world moved at a snail’s pace, but with the accelerated pace of change in the global political … Continue reading “Gunboat Democracy”

In a political environment more fractious than Washington has seen in over a decade, there are still signs that Left and Right can find common ground. A current example is a coalition of conservative interest groups that has joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and similar organizations to press for changes in … Continue reading “Left and Right vs. the PATRIOT Act”

Robert Novak told us last year that the U.S. was headed for a “quick exit” from Iraq – and in a recent column he’s holding to this prediction, crowing that he was right about Condoleezza Rice ascending to the State Department, and her deputy Stephen Hadley taking her place as national security adviser. Okay, so … Continue reading “Iraq: An Exit Strategy”

BEIRUT – The political upheaval that has engulfed Lebanon following the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri has given rise to fears of renewed sectarian bloodshed – and hopes that it can be avoided. The upheaval has resulted in an ongoing standoff between government loyalists and the opposition movement, a surge in street demonstrations, and … Continue reading “In Lebanon, Fear and Hope”

On March 26, 2005, the streets of Taipei were choked with people from all over the island, citizens of a nation still known legally as the Republic of China (ROC), citizens who’d gathered in force to protest a new anti-secession law that had just been passed by the much larger People’s Republic of China (PRC) … Continue reading “Taiwan Speaks Up, Damn the Torpedoes”

Hats off to journalist Dafna Linzer and Sunday’s Washington Post for exposing a familiar but fallacious syllogism favored by senior Bush administration officials: Iran has a lot of oil. Ergo, Iran does not need nuclear energy for civil purposes. Ergo, Iran’s nuclear development program must be for weapons. Linzer and her researcher, Robert Thomason, remind … Continue reading “Cheney’s Other Trick NIE?”

NEW DELHI – By offering nuclear-capable F-16 Falcon fighters to Pakistan and the even more advanced F-18 Hornets to India, Washington has shown a cynical readiness to profit from the long-standing rivalry between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors, say analysts. "This is a bit like the Aesop’s fable in which two cats fighting over a … Continue reading “US Arms Industry Fishing in Troubled South Asian Waters”