Since the founding of the CIA in 1947, it has been under attack, mainly from the right. Although left-center charges that the CIA has engineered coups against democratically-elected governments and trained death squads have received more public attention, a phalanx of...
Last December, Mark Danner took a piercing look back at our Presidential election in Florida, "How Bush Really Won," printed up in the New York Review of Books and posted on line at Tomdispatch. In the aftermath of another election, closely linked to our own and to...
So far, only a trickle of U.S. soldiers are heading north to Canada to avoid serving in the U.S. military campaign in Iraq. It is still relatively early in the conflict, which has not reached the level of the equally controversial U.S. military involvement in Vietnam...
"We have more than 250 trained and certified speakers who deliver our presentations. They are trained not to talk down to or lecture students; instead, they present the message as if they were a big brother or sister simply giving advice about their experiences and...
As a Washington-based pundit with some foreign policy credentials, I frequently receive phone calls from secretaries under pressure of a deadline who book "experts" like me for radio and television news shows, asking me to "do Iraq" or chat about some other area of...
Over the years, as the actions of the Israeli government have become more extreme – and less concerned with international public opinion – very little of what Israel's leaders say or do seems all that surprising. Invading the West Bank and Gaza, demolishing...
In the 1950s and 1960s, the curious profession of Kremlinologist was developed among academics and the intelligence community. These worthies made it their business to try to figure out what the less-than-scrutable folks running the Kremlin were likely to do. It...
Whenever the administration is challenged regarding the success of the Iraq war, or regarding the false information used to justify the war, the retort is: "Aren't the people of Iraq better off?" The insinuation is that anyone who expresses any reservations...
In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the USA PATRIOT Act, the following exchange took place between former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, now attorney general, and Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.): "GONZALES: Mr. Chairman, let me, kind of, reassure the...
Bizarre Balkans Bulletin There is a good reason most contemporary Balkans literature tends to be surreal. It is hard to write realistic fiction when reality is far more bizarre than anything literary wizards are capable of conjuring. In a place that logic and reason...
