Wednesday was the 17th anniversary of the Halabja massacre. On March 16, 1988, Saddam Hussein doused the small Kurdish city with deadly chemical weapons, killing 5,000 civilians. At the time, Iraq was in the midst of a long war with Iran. Europe and the United States...
Wolfowitz Pick for World Bank Prompts Head-Scratching
If sending arch-unilateralist John Bolton to the United Nations sent a message of contempt for multilateralism, what does U.S. President George W. Bush mean by sending that ardent advocate of "hard power," Paul Wolfowitz, to the planet's single biggest...
Eastern Empire Rising?
EU Back in the Balkans Following Emperor Bush II's visit to Europe last month, the U.S. seems to have pulled back to the sidelines of Balkans policy, letting its junior partners in Brussels deal with the peninsula. American threats and saber-rattling had produced...
Accountability: Why Not Start at the Top?
The word "accountability" is always bandied about in Washington as the solution for the woes brought on America by the current governing generation. Impassioned calls for accountability from presidents, senators, congressman, as well as media, academic, and social...
Handmaiden of the State
Editorial note: This is the text of a speech delivered before at audience at the Whittier Law School, in Whittier, California, on March 15. Does the media have an obligation to tell the truth? In discussing my topic with Joe Varada who was kind enough to ask me...
Coming to Terms With China
In our media lives, Asia plays a remarkably small and fragmented role, given its growing importance in the world. In our press, coverage of Asia is a strange jumble of alarums, fears, and trends: the North Korean bomb, avian flu and SARS, the tsunami, the Taiwan "war...
Ultimate Bush Insider Joins Rice at State Department
The most intriguing aspect of U.S. President George W. Bush's nomination of Karen Hughes to take charge of Washington's public diplomacy apparatus and particularly outreach to the Islamic world is the building out of which she will be working. The...
Propaganda War Gets a New General
The nomination of one of President George W. Bush's closest advisors to lead U.S. public diplomacy efforts has been met with both hope and skepticism by some leaders in the U.S. foreign policy community. "You need someone who knows something serious about the...
Tom Ridge’s October Surprise
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is trying once again to discover who was rounded up by the Department of Homeland Security in the weeks preceding the November 2004 presidential election "to assure the Arab-American and Muslim communities...
$225 Billion and No Exit Plan
President George W. Bush has now asked Congress and the U.S. taxpayers for the fourth time in two years for more money to fight the Iraq War. This time the request is for $82 billion, the highest amount requested so far. But more striking than the dollar amount is...


