This week, there was a brief glimmer of hope that U.S. forces might have killed the most wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. For many, Zarqawi has come to represent the Iraqi insurgency. Indeed, his stature in the eyes of the Bush administration is equal to...
From Cairo, Hope
The surprising degree of consensus reached by the main Iraqi factions at the Arab League-orchestrated Reconciliation Conference in Cairo last weekend sharply undercuts the unilateral, guns-and-puppets approach of the Bush administration to the deteriorating situation...
Life Goes On in Fallujah’s Rubble
A year after the U.S.-led "Operation Phantom Fury" damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools, and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction, and high rates of illness. The...
Beyond That Memo: Bush Wanted al-Jazeera Gone
On Nov. 22, Britain's Daily Mirror published a startling allegation: In an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush proposed bombing the Arab TV network al-Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. The report was based...
Bush: The Lord North of Today
Since I've been spending so much time in recent months reading and writing about President George W. Bush, his neoconservative advisers, and the mess in Iraq, I decided to take some time off these current topics and read a very well-written and well-researched life...
Iran Has Nuke Warheads! Not
A year ago, Colin Powell then secretary of state told reporters about new, scary intelligence on Iran. Something about Iran having a "nuke-capable" ballistic missile that could threaten "our allies." Several "U.S. officials"...
Who’s the Boss?
Bush's Asia tour swept through Beijing with much fanfare, but what can really be accomplished between the two figureheads of two huge and influential nations? Naturally, it will be up to the negotiators, diplomats, and private sector to follow up on the platitudes and...
Redeployment Is Not Withdrawal
There is much of which to approve in the recent speech of Rep. John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on Iraq. The hawkish Murtha had been critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war for some time, but until recently his solution had been to call for...
The Woodward Cover-Up
What did Len Downie know, and when did he know it? And more important, why didn't he do anything about it when he knew? On Oct. 24, if not earlier, the Washington Post editor learned that his star reporter Bob "Mr. Run Amok" Woodward had held back key information...
CIA’s ‘Torture Taxi’ in the Spotlight
Ft. Benning, Ga. - Sitting in a Georgia motel Saturday night, Kathy Kelly talked through a bad phone connection and a worse head cold to recount the previous day's activities, when she and 13 others were arrested at an airstrip outside Raleigh, N.C. The tiny Johnston...


