Handover, Yes, But to What?

BAGHDAD - Iraq's new minister of the interior Falah al-Nakib and his staff were so taken by surprise by the unexpected handover of sovereignty by the U.S.-led occupation Monday that they failed to make it to the brief ceremony. They stayed in their office, an air-raid...

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Regime Change in Iraq a Sham, Say Mideast Experts

UNITED NATIONS - Despite the positive responses Monday from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and members of the Security Council who praised the U.S. "transfer of sovereignty" to an interim government in Iraq, Middle East experts and political analysts dismiss the...

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Supreme Court Deals Bush Major Defeat on Detainees

In a major defeat for President George W. Bush, the U.S. Supreme Court Monday ruled that detainees captured in Bush's "war on terrorism" and detained at a U.S. base in Cuba or in U.S. territory have the right to challenge their detention in federal court. In an 8-1...

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Did CPA Take the Money and Run?

Billions of dollars of Iraqi oil money have gone unaccounted for by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), according to a new report released Monday. The British charity Christian Aid says that at least $20 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds intended to...

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Sovereignty Without Substance

Paul Bremer suddenly left Iraq on Monday, having "transferred sovereignty" to the caretaker Iraqi government two days early. It is hard to interpret this move as anything but a precipitous flight. It is just speculation on my part, but I suspect that the Americans...

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A Boy and His Nukes

According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Russia today is estimated to have 7,800 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal. I emphasize "estimated" because Russia, like all the nuclear powers, remains quite secretive about its nuclear arsenal. Altogether,...

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The ‘Prop-Agenda’ at War

ROME – In an interview with Arabic broadcaster al-Jazeera, President Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in 2001 that she did not want U.S. networks to show Osama bin Laden tapes because "it was not a matter of news, it was a matter of...

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Casus Belli: High-Pitched Whine

Well, there they go again. The neo-crazy media sycophants are quoting unnamed "Western diplomats" to the effect that Syria is secretly developing nukes. Evidence? Well, it seems someone’s "experimental" sensors may have picked up what may be the acoustic or...

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A Tale of Two Movies

Michael Moore's new film embodies all the virtues, and vices, of the American left at the present moment: it is trenchant and wrongheaded, serious and superficial, startlingly original and horribly clichéd. There is humor, sophomoric as well as dark; emotion,...

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As Violence Rises, an Unexpected Ceasefire

BAGHDAD – The daily mortar attacks on Camp War Eagle of the U.S. First Cavalry at the edge of the seething Shia Muslim Sadr City tapered off over the weekend. Just a few dry pops of exploding mortar grenades could be heard in the late afternoons. During the week...

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