Rights watchdogs have seized on this week's anniversary of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal to protest what they termed a lack of accountability for the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody, and to warn that problems which came to light at the prison in Iraq...
Put the Marx Brothers in Charge
The new Robb-Silberman report on U.S. intelligence capabilities should, but won't, enrage Americans. Too long at 600-plus pages for most to read, the report completes the destruction of the intelligence community especially the CIA begun by Congress'...
More on Gangs and Guerrillas vs. the State
A story in the April 26 Washington Times, "Drug Smugglers, Rebels Join Hands," by Carmen Gentile, offered an interesting illustration of the argument I made in my last column, that Fourth Generation entities may do everything they want to do within the framework of...
The Thirty Years War
This Saturday is the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, and in marking it one cannot help but note the parallels with the present intervention. Naturally, there are many differences: the nature of the enemy, the terrain, and the origins of the current...
Muslim Scholar Urges Halt to Extreme Punishments
NEW YORK - A Muslim scholar who was issued and then denied a visa to teach in the United States because of alleged ties to terrorists has called for an immediate moratorium on corporal and capital punishment and dialogue aimed at creating less repressive Muslim...
A Useful Whitewash
"Bush views new report on spy lapses with favor," was the headline on the New York Times story previewing the latest commission that reported several weeks ago on the manifest and manifold U.S. government intelligence failures in detecting...
Letting in the Draft?
An overstretched military? You bet. Things going terribly in Iraq? No kidding. Why only yesterday, Jill Carroll and Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor reminded us that, with 140,000 troops (and untold numbers of mercenaries) in Iraq, the Americans can't...
Israelis Resist the Arabs in Their Midst
JERUSALEM - More than four years of violence between Israelis and Palestinians may have abated at least temporarily, but its effect is still being felt on relations between Jews and Arabs inside Israel. A string of recent polls, events and policy issues shows that...
Whitewashing the Holocaust
Jasenovac and the Politics of Genocide On April 22, 1945, a group of surviving inmates broke out of Jasenovac, Nazi-allied Croatia's main death camp. Sixty years later, their memories and the grisly history of Jasenovac have become prey to politics,...
Exploring the Mideast Conflict With an Open Heart
After years of planning and collaboration, San Francisco's Traveling Jewish Theatre has brought its new play Blood Relative to the stage. Formed with input from all five performers, along with director Aaron Davidman and dramaturg Naomi Newman, the play centers around...


