Georgie Ann Geyer, who may be America's most perceptive international affairs columnist, wrote in the Saturday, September 17 Washington Times about a recent Washington conference concerning the mess in the Middle East. That could, of course, have been a conference...
Whistleblowers Describe Routine, Severe Abuse
As a military jury in Texas considers the fate of Lynndie England, the low-ranking reservist pictured in the notorious photos of the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in late 2003, two sergeants and a captain in one of the U.S. Army's most decorated combat...
The Occasional Media Ritual of Lamenting the Habitual
Dan Rather caused some ripples the other day when he lamented the state of U.S. news media. The former CBS anchor said "there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career," according to the...
Before It’s Too Late
Hurricane Katrina and its near-catastrophic aftermath, which bids fair to be compounded by Rita, might be reason enough, given the resources that will be used (whether they are really required on the federal level is another matter, but President Bush is approaching...
Why Immediate Withdrawal Makes Sense
Not long after Baghdad fell to American troops, it was already apparent that the United States was part of the problem, not part of the solution, in Iraq; and that, as long as the American military occupied the country, matters would just get worse. Every passing...
Iran’s Nuclear Dispute Sparks East-West Rivalry
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the former Soviet Union jealously safeguarded their own global political and military interests by vetoing each other's resolutions in the most powerful body at the United Nations: the...
Bizarro Basra
The closer we look at what happened in Basra the other day, the murkier and more suspicious the picture gets. Two British undercover operatives fired at the Iraqi police, killing one and injuring another, and were taken into custody, then "rescued" as British tanks...
Theater of the Absurd
The Bizarre Balkans Stage It is arguably the Bard's most famous play; there is hardly a civilized soul on Earth who has not heard of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. It has been modernized, localized, deconstructed, filmed countless times, and even translated...
More Blood, Less Oil
It has long been an article of faith among America's senior policymakers Democrats and Republicans alike that military force is an effective tool for ensuring control over foreign sources of oil. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to embrace...
Promise and Peril in North Korea Deal
This week's six-party agreement on the principles for denuclearizing the Korean peninsula is being greeted somewhat warily here, with most experts stressing that the accord marks only the beginning of what is likely to be a protracted negotiating process that could...


