The Third Intifada

To appreciate the breathtaking magnanimity expressed by this short slogan, one needs to remember its context. Imagine: a foreign army occupies your village for decades, reduces you to subjects without any rights, arrests you arbitrarily, savagely tortures the...

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Virtual Nukes

David Sanger's recent interview with Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has resulted in a New York Times article about "virtual nukes." What is a "virtual" nuke? Well, apparently, it's a nuke that...

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Backtalk, December 11, 2004

Feeding the Iraq Moloch ... There is no excuse for government's paying for innocent hostages. Killing innocents will isolate the terrorists to the support of immoral people. The exchange of hostages is only reasonable if all are combatants. As long as we release their...

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Rebellion in the Ranks

It was a Maalox moment for Donald Rumsfeld. At a forum held with U.S. troops in Kuwait who are headed to Iraq, the barrage of friendly fire soon scored a direct hit when a scout with the Tennessee National Guard, one Specialist Thomas Wilson, rose, and, his voice...

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Tillman’s True Tragedy

Although I had some thoughts at the time, I thought it would be churlish to question the decision of Pat Tillman, in his fourth year as a linebacker for the NFL Arizona Cardinals, with a $3.6 million contract, to give up professional sports and enlist in the Army...

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Deception as a Way of Life

During the Balkans wars of the 1990s, quite a few people who dared question the Official Truth as presented by the Western media and governments frequently complained that reports from Bosnia and Kosovo at the very least distorted the truth, and sometimes even made it...

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Mishandled Money Plagued US-Ruled Iraq

U.S. management of the Iraqi economy was plagued by irregularities, corruption, failures, and the mishandling of billions of dollars, according to analysts and multiple recent audits. Sloppy accounting and lax oversight of contracts were routine under the now defunct...

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US Hypocrisy on Ukraine

President Bush said last week that, "Any election [in Ukraine], if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence." I agree with the president wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, it seems that several U.S. government agencies saw things differently and sent U.S....

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Bush Gets Weak Intel Reform – Barely

While opinions are divided over whether the revamp of the U.S. intelligence community laid out in the compromise bill just approved by Congress will improve the performance of the relevant agencies, there is little doubt that the failure of President George W. Bush to...

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