We are constantly admonished to remember the lessons of 9/11. Of course the real issue is not remembering, but rather knowing what the pertinent lesson of that sad day is. The 9/11 Commission soon will release its report after months of fanfare by those whose...
What's up with Israel's preoccupation with wheelchair-bound paraplegics? First, they offed Sheikh Yassin, the blind paraplegic known as the spiritual mentor of Hamas, with a few well-aimed shots from an Israeli helicopter gunship. Now the news out of New Zealand is...
The situation of the detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo has been taboo for the United Nations human rights system, but particularly since Cuba decided Thursday not to pursue its moderately worded resolution against the United States. Cuba's ambassador Iván...
American soldiers in Iraq have trouble understanding the principles that we are told they are fighting for. That is why when Iraqis objected to the seizure of posters of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the troops were left befuddled. Engineers from 1st Platoon,...
It was quite an experience to be on the same panel on Tuesday with Richard Perle and Toby Dodge, before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Perle wasn't added until the last minute, and it is mysterious why he was there, since ours was supposed to be an...
Until recently, it was easy to find Sheikh Salim Mejid Jumar, one of Muqtada Sadr's top leaders in Baghdad. The cleric dressed in flowing white robes could be found most days in the municipal building of Baghdad's poor and primarily Shia neighborhood Showle. He is a...
Although spying charges have been dropped against a Muslim army chaplain ministering to the 600 prisoners at Washington's Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, the fate of two others facing similar accusations remains in doubt. The chaplain, Capt. James Yee, was...
"If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the New York Times. The Weekly Standard editor added that the neoconservatives may just abandon the Right altogether and...
U.S. public perceptions about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda and stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues to lag far behind the testimony of experts, boosting chances that President George W Bush will be reelected,...
I keep thinking that sooner or later a cumulative effect will kick in and the American people will succumb to the evidence that the rationales for the Iraqi war and its still-bloodier-than-expected aftermath were the fantastical and thoroughly unjustified. True, the...
