Politicians, like writers, preachers, and professors, are word people. They deal mainly in words, not in actions. If you wish to understand the present political situation, you need to understand how politicians use words. You can start by scratching off...
Maybe you thought that when President Bush declared war on terror it was just a euphemism. Wrong! By that declaration, Bush made himself commander in chief of our armed forces, which he is – under the Constitution – only "in time of war." Once...
I really should have learned by now. The White House offers some tantalizing hints that this time the president is really going to lay things out in a way the American people can understand, demonstrate that he is conversant with the facts on the ground and how to...
Nothing puts the lie to the Bush administration's absurd claim that it invaded Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East more decisively than its ceaseless attacks on al-Jazeera, the institution that has done more than any other to break the stranglehold...
A new spotlight has been thrown on the army of private military operators in Iraq, following the emergence of footage that appears to show security guards shooting up civilian cars on "Route Irish," the notorious Baghdad Airport road. The so-called trophy...
There is no real need for a line-by-line analysis of the speech delivered yesterday by the Trotskyite-in-chief: a succinct summary will suffice. The president's response to the polls, which show overwhelming opposition to the Iraq war, is: screw you. To those...
On the Sept. 27 Charlie Rose Show, interviewing New Yorker editor David Remnick, Rose brought up the question of what the United States should do in Iraq. Should we "get out" – or, as Remnick so delicately put it, should we "bolt"? Here was how Remnick ended...
Before he invaded Iraq, President Bush warned us that the terrorists were using Iraq as a base to attack America. After the invasion, we found out that was nonsense on stilts. Now Bush warns us the terrorists really are using Iraq as a base to attack America, and we...
While George Bush explains his "victory strategy" for Iraq to the American people, his Pentagon chief has already thrown out the most obvious option. There will be no immediate troop withdrawal, cautioned Donald Rumsfeld, because "quitting is not an exit strategy."...
The suicide bombings in Jordan recently carried out by al-Qaeda in Iraq seem to have blown back on the jihadis. According to Western press reports, almost all those killed were Muslims, including a Palestinian wedding party. Outrage among Jordanians has compelled...
