Most conspiracy buffs underestimate human stupidity. They see people they consider smart and powerful do stupid things, and they think the people must have some hidden ulterior motive. Surely people in such high positions, they think, couldn't do something that dumb....
When I was a kid, I liked the musical band Devo, whose name was derived from their concept that man was devolving. It was funny at the time, but 30 years later I feel compelled to write why torture is wrong, so maybe Devo was right. I wrote about apparent torture at...
Three U.S. senators have called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to account for $8.8 billion entrusted to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq earlier this year but now gone missing. In a letter Thursday, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, Byron L. Dorgan...
Belgrade (Beograd) means "White City" in old Slavic as well as modern Serbian. The city stands on the confluence of two major rivers, the Sava and the Danube, and presently has almost two million residents. With many of them away on vacation in the dog days of early...
GENEVA - The bomb attack on the United Nations offices in Baghdad a year ago Thursday posed "wrenching, fundamental questions" for the world body with respect to security, to which answers have not yet been found. Speaking on the first anniversary of the...
At first it looked fairly interesting, perhaps even modestly promising, from the perspective of somebody who worries about the United States being overcommitted overseas and stretched rather thin militarily to meet some of the challenges that could arise from chronic...
The war in Iraq and other foreign affairs are more important to voters in the coming presidential election than the economy, marking the first time since the Vietnam era that U.S. citizens are putting more weight on foreign policy than domestic concerns, according to...
The nation's top dog of war is frisky again. Donald Rumsfeld has returned to high visibility – after a couple of months in the media doghouse following revelations about torture at the Abu Ghraib prison – now openly romancing the journalistic pack with his...
Abu Ghraib I was shocked to see those sick photographs. When I enlisted in the U.S. Army I heard stories about atrocities committed by US soldiers in World War II and the Korean War, but we never saw any photos. Had I seen such pictures I would not have enlisted,...
A recently unearthed government memorandum prepared for the U.S. Congress addresses the power of the administration to postpone elections. But more notably, it reviews actions the executive branch might take that could preclude large numbers of Americans from casting...
